


Cross Product

by Quasar



Series: Criss-Cross [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-29
Updated: 2010-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-10 07:48:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasar/pseuds/Quasar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John ends up in the wrong place and has to save two expeditions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some violence, mention of off-screen non-con. This is the first story in the Criss-Cross series and can stand by itself; later stories in the series work better together. Written July 2006.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sheppard goes surfing and doesn't have amnesia.

"All this sand," said John as they exited the jumper, "and no waves, no surf shop --"

"No bleached blondes to hang adoringly on your arm," Rodney added dryly.

"Yeah, what's up with that?"

Ronon and Teyla ignored the Earth in-jokes as they started scouting the area.

The outpost they had come to check out was intact, but empty. It had been thoroughly plundered, either by the Ancients as they left or by more recent scavengers. Sand was everywhere, piling into drifts in the corners. Various oddly-shaped sockets in the walls and cannibalized consoles made McKay groan as he described what had probably been removed from them.

There was one door which opened only at Sheppard's touch, revealing a clean, pristine chamber to the flashlight on his P-90. Unfortunately, it was hardly bigger than a walk-in closet and almost completely empty: just some Ancient text engraved in a semi-circle around something on the wall.

"Wait, don't touch that," McKay snapped, waving a scanner in each hand -- one Ancient and one mostly Earth technology. "Back up, get away from it!"

"What is it?" John asked, backing up half a step but negating that by leaning closer for a better look. It didn't look dangerous at first glance: no sharp parts, no tubes for projectiles, no large power banks or crystal arrays. Just a weirdly-textured thing like a piece of art with an overly ornate frame.

"Hmm," said McKay, and "Wait, maybe it -- no. Hmm." He plied his scanners around the thing, looking increasingly puzzled. Teyla stepped up to the doorway and added the light of her weapon to the subject, Ronon looming over her shoulder. "For a moment there it was giving off a signal almost like a quantum mirror, but now it looks completely different."

"A mirror? It's not shiny."

"A _quantum_ mirror, Colonel."

"Yeah, I read the reports. But those are still reflective, aren't they? This isn't." He moved his head around, studying the odd pebbly texture of the thing from different angles. It was almost holographic, as if there were something projected above the surface, but he couldn't bring it into focus.

"And that would be why I said 'completely different.'" Rodney dropped the two scanners to his side and frowned at the writing around the object. "Typical cryptic gobbledygook," he muttered. "But it does remind me . . . huh. I never saw any scans, but in appearance this is almost more like that database interface thing SG-1 found on -- ack!"

As Sheppard craned a little closer, the ornate frame suddenly grew fat claws and grabbed him by the head. He dropped his weapon and raised his hands to struggle, then went still as a bright light flashed from inside the device.

"Yeah, like that," Rodney said faintly, raising a hand to forestall Ronon and Teyla from grabbing Sheppard. "Wait a second . . ."

The frame retracted and Sheppard staggered away from it, blinking dazedly.

"You going to pass out now, Colonel?" Rodney asked, waving Ronon forward to catch him if he fell.

Sheppard startled back as Ronon approached him, eyes flicking up and down the big man, then to Rodney's scanners and Teyla's weapon. He lifted the P-90 hanging from his vest and swung the light quickly around the chamber without turning his back on any of the others.

"Are you all right, Colonel?" Teyla asked.

He gave her a second and then a third look, making Rodney shift impatiently.

"Look, if you're going to start speaking in tongues, you might as well get started. We know a lot more about the Ancient language and culture now than we did when O'Neill went through this, so that's not a problem. And the Daedalus is due back in just over a week, so Hermiod can probably fix you before there's any permanent brain damage."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Sheppard said. He patted down his tac vest uncertainly. "Why are you calling me Colonel?"

"Um," said Rodney.

Now Sheppard was looking at his hands, front and back. "And what is this place? And who are you people, anyway?"

* * *

John pulled back as the light struck his eyes. Then there was a confused jumble of sensations: orange sunshine, wind in his face, water rushing below, a rough board just leaving contact with his toes, and a big honking wave crashing down right on top of him. It was a spectacular wipeout.

He figured out which way was up, got his head above the water, and started stroking in toward shore. He wasn't thinking just yet about what had happened; that could wait until he was on firm ground again.

Another surfer paddling out toward the bigger waves paused and yelled, "You all right, man?" John just nodded and waved him away.

He recovered the stray board and rode the rest of the way in on his belly. His muscles certainly felt as if he'd been doing this for a few hours. The late afternoon sunlight and the gravity and the faint whiff of smog all said _Earth_ in some deep, indescribable way. He even thought he recognized the beach: California, near Del Mar. But he still didn't know how he'd gotten here, except that he'd been thinking about surfing less than an hour ago.

He didn't recognize the board -- a short board, pretty athletic for someone as out of practice as he was -- or the wetsuit he was wearing, but his hands and feet looked like his own, and his face felt mostly normal as he rubbed at it. Had his hair been that long when he showered this morning? He was wearing his usual wristband on the right and a waterproof watch (not familiar) on the left. 09 23 2006, 17:48, the watch told him. The date seemed right, but he had to think a while about the time difference between Atlantis Standard Time and Pacific, uh, Daylight? Yes, he decided, late morning on Atlantis should be late afternoon here, this day of the week.

So he'd been, what, instantaneously transported several million light-years just because he had an urge to surf? McKay would have mentioned if that little device hanging on the wall had been putting out enough energy for intergalactic transport. And where the hell had the board and wetsuit and watch come from?

John looked out uncertainly at the other surfers bobbing on the waves. The guy who called to him had apparently seen him wipe out, but he hadn't acted as if John appeared out of nowhere in a flash of light. Was he a friend or acquaintance? Had they come to the beach together?

Maybe he should have told the guy he banged his head on the board, and now he had amnesia. But that would land him in a hospital, with lots of questions that he couldn't answer without violating security.

Security -- he could call the SGC! Someone there, maybe Colonel Carter, must be able to figure out what had happened to him.

If he could find a phone. And some money to make the call.

He patted his suit until he found a zippered pocket at the side. It contained a driver's license -- oh good, at least he was still John Sheppard -- and a Mustang key. He studied the license in puzzlement; he hadn't been anywhere near San Diego in January 2004, when this was issued. Then he picked up his board and headed for the parking lot at the top of the beach, walking slowly in case a surfing buddy or two tried to catch up with him. No one did.

There was only one Mustang in the lot -- half primer and two different colors of paint, but the tires were fairly new -- and his key fit on the first try. His board didn't, until he realized there was no headrest on the passenger's seat. He rolled down the passenger window and got the board in diagonally.

The glove compartment held more keys, a little money, a wallet with credit cards and a pilot's license (civilian) with a different address than the driver's license, and some recently-postmarked mail with yet another address. He'd just have to track these places down and find out which one the keys would fit. Then he'd get some real clothes, some real food, and phone the SGC.

* * *

"Oh god, he has amnesia," Rodney choked. "That wasn't a database-downloading device after all."

"Do you feel all right, Colonel?" Teyla repeated.

"Right, of course!" Rodney snapped. "Your head, how's your head, does it hurt? Are you dizzy? Maybe you should sit down. There's a console in the other room where you could -- Ronon, give him a hand."

Ronon stepped forward again and Sheppard stepped back, snapping up his P-90 and flipping the safety off. "Nobody's going anywhere until I get some answers."

Everyone went very still. "Oh god," said Rodney again.

"Colonel, we are your friends," said Teyla warmly. "Ask us whatever you wish to know."

"He doesn't remember, he has no idea what's going on! Look, you're Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, and --"

"I know who I am," Sheppard growled. "And I'm not any kind of colonel. Who are you people?"

"Right, right, if you've forgotten us you must still think you're a major."

"Actually, I _think_ I'm --"

"Well, um, Major, this is Teyla, and Ronon, and I'm Dr. Rodney McKay. We're members of your team, your, uh, exploration team. You're the ranking military officer of a civilian-led expedition in, um, a place very far from home. Oh god, he's not going to believe any of this, is he?"

"All he needs to believe is we're not his enemies," Ronon growled, his eyes still fixed on the P-90.

"Ronon is correct. John, we are your friends and team members. You must trust us."

"Yes, right, we have to get you back to -- um, back home, and Carson -- Dr. Beckett, our medical doctor -- he can have a look at you, and maybe figure out -- oh, yeah, I'd better get some more scan data on this thing for him to work with." Rodney lifted his scanners, flinched as Sheppard's P-90 turned in his direction, then aimed the scanners with elaborately slow movements at the device on the wall.

"John. What can we do to help you trust us?" Teyla asked.

Sheppard had backed into a corner of the small room, his eyes flicking from one to the other as they spoke. "I'm not sure I should trust you. This all seems pretty far-out," he drawled. "But if you're supposed to be my friends, why don't you tell me something only a friend would know about me."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, because you always talk about yourself so freely. You're like an open book -- in Sanskrit!"

"You like to fly," Ronon rumbled.

"When we first met, you told me that you like football, and ferris wheels, and anything that goes faster than 200 miles per hour."

Rodney snapped his fingers. "Football! You love that game, that, that -- the college game, with the last-second pass --"

"Hail Mary," said Teyla.

"Doug Flutie," Ronon filled in.

"Yeah, that one!" Rodney spoke rapidly. "You also like Back to the Future. And you think DS9 was better than Babylon 5, which is just ridi-- Oh! And you like Johnny Cash. But you're a lousy guitar player."

Sheppard had relaxed a little, but he still didn't seem convinced. "Anyone could know those things about me just from talking with my old buddies. And you're supposed to have known me for how long?"

"Well, if you weren't such a close-mouthed bastard about your past--!"

"Dr. McKay," Teyla reproved gently. "I know a little more. I know about your friends Mitch and Dex, who wore colorful clothes and died in . . . Caboo?"

"Kabul," Rodney corrected reflexively.

"Khabour, actually," said Sheppard. His eyes narrowed at Teyla.

She tried again. "Your sixth teacher was Miss Watson?"

"Sixth grade," Sheppard said. "And how do you know that?"

"Oh, _please_, we told you, we're your friends! Teammates! Teyla's ali-- foreign, you can't expect her to remember every term exactly, but I think it's obvious she knows you pretty well."

"I'm still not convinced any of you know anything about me you couldn't get from reading my files."

"We go running together," Ronon put in suddenly. "You always start out with a sprint, and then you do some stretches. You say you have to be careful of your right knee, because it was injured a few years ago."

Teyla caught on. "In fighting, you favor your right side too much."

"Your left hook is good, but your left jab is weak," Ronon added.

"In the field, you always forget to look to your left," Teyla went on. "You miss people coming up on your 'eight,' as you put it."

"Like that," said Ronon, striking snake-fast. He snatched the P-90 out of Sheppard's grasp and twisted an arm behind his back. He grunted as an elbow hit his side, then Teyla was moving in to get Sheppard's sidearm and unclip the P-90 from his vest.

"Dammit!" Sheppard yelled, struggling ferociously. He twisted enough to knee Ronon's groin and pulled the Satedan's blaster gun free of its holster. But he fumbled the unfamiliar controls, and a moment later Ronon had him pinned face-down with his arms pulled back.

"Don't hit him, don't hit him!" Rodney shouted frantically. "The last thing he needs is a concussion on top of whatever that thing did to his brain."

"We are trying," Teyla said through gritted teeth as she tried to wrap a plastic tie around the wrists Ronon was holding behind Sheppard's back, "to secure him without hurting him."

"And he isn't making it easy," Ronon grunted, half-admiring as he leaned his knee into the small of Sheppard's back.

"Well of course he isn't! He probably thinks we're evil kidnappers or terrorists or something! We'll never get him back to Atlantis now."

"We'll keep him quiet," Ronon said. "You just worry about flying the jumper."

Sheppard went still. "Did you just say _Atlantis_? What kind of code name is that?"

"He's never going to believe us now," Rodney moaned.

"He will when he sees the jumper," Teyla promised.

* * *

"Sergeant Harriman speaking."

"Sergeant, you're the fourth person I've spoken to. I'm Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, and I'm trying to reach General Landry."

"General who?"

"Landry, Hank Landry, the head of the SGC!"

"The SG what?"

"Okay, look, how about General O'Neill?"

"General O'Neill is not available at this time."

"But at least you admit you've heard of him. Is there another number where I can reach him?"

"I'm not authorized to give out --"

"Look, Sergeant, I don't think you heard me the first time. I'm _Lieutenant Colonel_ Sheppard, and I need to talk to the General."

"Yes, sir, I did hear you, but I checked, and there's no LTC Sheppard on record with the Air Force."

"What?"

"Major John Sheppard was dishonorably discharged in 2003."

"Oh, shit. This is worse than I thought."

"Excuse me, sir?"

"What about Colonel Carter, is she available?"

"Colonel Carter is not on base at this time."

"'Not on base' meaning -- okay, fine. We couldn't have a proper conversation over an unsecured line anyway. Look, just . . . tell the General I called. Whichever one it is. And give him the tape of this conversation. I'll call again tomorrow to talk to him."

"Sir, do you want the General to --"

John hung up and ran a hand over his stubbled face. He looked around the apartment, which was small and a little dingy, with threadbare rugs and mismatched furniture. "So much for this being a virtual reality I can control by concentrating hard enough," he muttered.

He stumbled to the bathroom, legs and back aching in a familiar way from surfing. Business done and hands washed, he stared into the mirror. His hair _was_ longer, especially at the back, and his stubble was too far advanced given that he remembered shaving just a few hours ago.

He tilted his chin up and brushed his fingers over unblemished skin where an Iratus bug had given him a monster hickey two years ago. Then he pulled up his sleeves. The right arm had no blue mole where Ellia had fed on him and nearly turned him into an Iratus bug himself. The left arm was missing the matching gun grazes from the 10,000-year-old Wraith a year and a half ago, and from Rodney firing blindly just a couple of months ago.

On the other hand, his knee had the surgical scars from the chopper crash eight years back, and the heel of his left hand had the faint scar from the skateboarding accident when he was thirteen.

"So," he said to his reflection, the same face he had always seen in the mirror. "This is John Sheppard's body. But it isn't _my_ body. Whatever's going on here is seriously screwed up."

He was still inclined to the virtual reality theory, but this world seemed a lot more complete -- and resistant to manipulation -- than the one created by the mist-aliens, or even the virtual environment on the Aurora. So whoever was trying to fake him out was really good at it, but he would figure a way around it sooner or later.

Or maybe, just maybe, this was real and even more screwed up than he thought. As unlikely as that seemed, he had to keep the possibility in mind. He had to play this as if it was real until he found the crack in the illusion.

He found a phone book in the kitchen and looked up the nearest internet cafe. He was going to do some searches until he found someone who could help him, someone who would listen.

* * *

"Right, then, Colonel." Carson snapped on a pair of gloves. "I understand you gave your team here a bit of trouble. You're not going to make this difficult for me, now are you?"

Sheppard's stiff-spined outrage had lasted until the jumper took off. At first he had insisted that they weren't really moving and the windshield was just some kind of flight simulator, until Rodney had turned down the inertial dampeners to let him feel their motion. Then he had wavered between disbelief and excitement -- mostly excitement. Apparently nothing persuaded Sheppard like flying. He had talked Rodney into demonstrating a few basic maneuvers on the way back to the Gate, but he couldn't convince them to untie him and let him take the stick. The request seemed like a good sign, though.

Sheppard had been silent since they came through the Gate, gazing around at the city thoughtfully as he was led to the infirmary. Now, sitting on a hospital bed with his hands still bound behind him, he gave an awkward shrug. "I can't say I believe everything these guys have been telling me, but it does seem too elaborate for a hoax."

"Elaborate it certainly is," said Carson, running an Ancient scanner over Sheppard's body.

"And it is not a hoax," Teyla added. She and the other members of the team were standing in a loose circle around the bed, waiting for Beckett to shoo them away.

But it seemed the doctor had something else in mind. "All right, Ronon, let him go now. I'm sure you and Teyla can stop him if he tries anything."

Ronon pulled out his largest knife, grinned at Sheppard's uneasy look, and sliced through the plastic ties holding his wrists. Sheppard pulled his hands forward and rubbed at them with a frown, straightening his watch and wristband while Beckett continued to look him over.

"I understand you've a touch of amnesia, Colonel, is that right?" Carson asked.

"I'm not a colonel," Sheppard said softly.

"Yes, he seems to have lost a few years," Rodney answered. "He knows himself, but not us, and --"

"All right, Rodney, I'd like to check him out for myself. Just a few questions, Colonel, to help us figure out where your head is at. Your name?"

"John David Sheppard."

"Date of birth?"

"July sixteenth, 1969."

"And what do you think is the current date?"

"September, uh, twenty-third, 2006."

Rodney gasped. "Oh, no."

"The current president of the U.S.?"

"Hayes."

Teyla shifted closer to Rodney. "What is it?" she murmured.

"He knows the date today, and -- and the president. He doesn't have amnesia at all!" Rodney didn't bother keeping his voice down.

Sheppard canted an eyebrow at him. "How did I get here, then, and how come I don't know any of you?"

Rodney took two steps backward. "He's not our Sheppard!"

"What do you mean?" said Ronon, tensing into a ready stance.

"Rodney, please, I'm trying to conduct an examination here," Carson snapped. "And I assure you, this is our Colonel Sheppard. Look at this." He tilted Sheppard's chin up with one gloved finger and pointed at the puncture marks on his neck. "And if you would roll up your right sleeve, please?"

Sheppard dropped the hand that been feeling anxiously at his neck and pulled the sleeve back. "Eugh. Is that leprosy or something?"

"That's where you almost got turned into a --"

"Rodney!" Carson glared. "It's nothing, Colonel, just an oddly-pigmented scar, that's all."

"I keep telling you guys, I'm not a colonel!"

Carson sighed. "Right then, what is your rank and where are you stationed?"

"I'm not stationed anywhere. I was discharged three years ago. I fly a news helicopter out of San Diego."

They stared at him.

"See?" said Rodney stridently. "Not our Sheppard!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McKay interrupts Carter and brain-melds with Zelenka.

A day and a half later, John was in Colorado Springs, feeling punchy from too much caffeine and not enough sleep. The little Mustang, despite its battered appearance, had performed like a dream, and he had lost some of his tension as the miles slipped by. Now he was remembering everything he had to worry about. Was he about to face down a real -- and really angry -- general, or was he about to blow this fake world out of the water?

He'd stopped at a little coffeehouse just at the edge of town on the road to the Cheyenne Mountain complex. He was contemplating his strategy over capuccino and a slice of spinach-artichoke quiche when Dr. Daniel Jackson walked in. John hadn't gotten to know the man well in Antarctica, but he had lumped him in the same class as McKay: brilliant, excitable, and near-impossible to draw away from his work. John was definitely wishing he had Rodney here to untangle this bizarre situation. But given their similarities in disposition, maybe Jackson was someone who would listen with an open mind.

He watched as the archaeologist ordered a large double espresso and sat down with a huge leather-bound tome balanced on his knees. Standing and unconsciously tugging at his rumpled shirt, John considered the best way to approach the man. He was just crossing past the doorway when someone entering bumped into him.

It was McKay.

John's jaw dropped. "Rodney! You're here too? Thank God, I could use the help." He started to clasp McKay's upper arms, but the scientist was pulling back and lifting his elbows, and somehow John ended up grabbing him by the ribs instead. It seemed only natural to slide forward and give him a hug.

Natural to John, but apparently not to Rodnay, who stiffened and pushed him away with an appalled look.

"How did you get here?" John asked. "Do you know how to get back?"

"Back?" said McKay weakly, his eyes flashing over Sheppard's shoulder.

"I take it this place _isn't_ real, then?" John blew out a breath in relief. "That's what I figured, but I wasn't sure. I'm glad to see you -- I thought I was all alone here."

"Um . . ."

Hollow-headed with exhaustion, John didn't notice that he was doing a lot more than his usual share of the talking. "What did you do, stick your head in that device to come after me, after all the warning me about how dangerous it was? I just hope you've got some kind of back door ready to let us out of here, because I haven't had any luck thinking myself out so far."

"Hi, Rodney, is this a friend of yours?"

John turned to find Jackson at his elbow. The man seemed very mild-mannered, blinking at the two of them pleasantly, but something about his stance raised John's hackles. He automatically started to place himself between McKay and the threat. "I work with Rodney," he answered, and held out a hand. "John Sheppard."

Jackson smiled but didn't shake. "Daniel Jackson."

"Yes, I know --"

"Daniel, I've never seen this man before in my life!" McKay said, in tones of near-panic.

John's head whipped around. "Wait, what? I thought you entered the simulation to help me out!"

"Simulation?" Jackson asked quickly.

John stepped back to get both of them in view, but Jackson shifted to flank him without seeming to do it deliberately. John realized the faint threat he sensed was directed at _him_, and he suddenly recalled that the quiet archaeologist effectively had more combat experience than many veteran Marines.

Except that this was just a virtual representation of Daniel Jackson -- wasn't it?

"What are you talking about? What simulation?" McKay demanded.

"Well, this, uh, all of this." John waved vaguely at the cafe. "This isn't real, is it? It can't be real." After all, Rodney had appeared right after he wished for him.

"Did you forget your little pills this morning? Of course it's real!"

Jackson squinted and rubbed his nose. "I've always found it simplest to assume things are real until I see evidence to the contrary."

John shook his head in confusion. "But it doesn't make any sense. If this is really Earth, why is everything different? And how did I get here from Pegasus?"

"_If_ this is Earth?" Jackson repeated, at the same moment that McKay said, "Pegasus?"

"Yeah, you know, a galaxy far, far away? Home of Atlantis?"

There was a moment of stunned silence, and John wondered if he shouldn't have mentioned the Ancient city. But if the aliens creating the virtual reality wanted to know about Atlantis, that could be the key to cracking their illusion.

Assuming it was an illusion. He still wasn't sure about that.

McKay looked around the mostly-empty cafe before hissing, "How do you know about --"

"Atlantis is, is a myth," Jackson interrupted.

"Yes, right, of course, a myth," McKay said quickly. "Whereas this, here, Earth, is real. Are the hair gel fumes making you confuse fantasy with reality?"

"No. No, this doesn't make sense." John stumbled back until he hit a chair and sat down. "If this is real . . . if this is real . . . but it's all wrong. Damn, why is it wrong? My head hurts." He rubbed at his temples.

"What precisely do you think is wrong with this, um, this world?" Jackson asked quietly.

"History is wrong. I'm wrong -- I'm not supposed to be on this planet at all. And you don't recognize me, and McKay acts like I'm an axe murderer or something -- it's all just wrong!"

Jackson squinted at McKay. "You know, this seems sort of familiar."

McKay nodded. "It almost sounds like he's describing --"

"-- an alternate reality," they finished in unison.

"A what?" John asked, but at that moment the cafe door opened.

A couple of uniformed men walked in, nodded to Jackson and took up positions looming over John with their hands poised over their sidearms. "I'll have to ask you to come with us, sir," the older one said.

John felt strangely as if he'd just screwed up a first contact mission.

* * *

"So, let me get this straight." Seated at the conference room table, Sheppard looked between Rodney and Elizabeth. "These . . . Ancient aliens you're talking about invented some gates for traveling between planets."

"Stargates, yes," said Elizabeth.

"And they left one on Earth."

"Two, actually," Rodney said, garnering annoyed looks from the others. "But we don't need to go into the details just now."

"And the Air Force discovered this gate thing and started sending expeditions to other planets."

"Not just the Air Force . . . well, yes, basically." Rodney subsided under combined glares.

"And we're on another planet right now."

"That's right." Elizabeth smiled at him.

"You might notice the gravity is just a little lower than Earth's, by about three percent."

"He doesn't need to know every detail at once, Rodney," Carson protested.

"Come on, he's a pilot! He notices things like this. It's the simplest way to prove that what we said is true." Rodney turned back to Sheppard. "The other planet, with all the sand, that one had a gravity almost fifteen percent higher than Earth's."

Sheppard blinked. "I just thought my vest was loaded down."

"If you had dropped something, or tripped, you would have noticed that the acceleration --"

"Enough, Rodney," said Elizabeth. "I think he believes we're not on Earth."

"We're on -- in -- Atlantis," said Sheppard, returning to his recap.

"Yes."

"A floating city built by those same aliens."

"Actually, they were physically indistinguishable from humans, with differences primarily noticeable at the genetic level," Carson began, then noticed that Rodney and Elizabeth were glaring at _him_ now. "But, yes, not originally from Earth."

Sheppard was distracted. "Wait, why would they look like humans? Is there some reason for that?"

"Well, technically we're descended from them," Carson said. "So are the races of the Pegasus Galaxy, like Teyla and Ronon here."

Sheppard turned to look at the other two members of the team. "You guys are aliens?"

"We are not from your Earth," said Teyla gravely.

"Whoa," said Sheppard. Then he looked back at Rodney. "But none of this explains why I'm here."

"Well, you -- or rather, our Colonel Sheppard -- is part of the Atlantis expedition. He has a gene which lets him interface more efficiently with some of the Ancient technology. We found a device on that desert planet, and Sheppard activated it by accident, and . . . it switched you into his place. I'm still working out the details of how that happened, and we need to understand before we can try to do anything about it." Rodney frowned and stood up. "In fact, I should be getting back to my lab. Zelenka must have finished going over those scans by now."

"I'll want an update before dinner," Elizabeth called after him as he headed for the door, and he waved a hand in acknowledgment. Behind him, she said. "Teyla, Ronon -- could you show Mr. Sheppard around, please? Make sure he doesn't get lost?"

* * *

John was locked in a mostly bare room under Cheyenne Mountain. All his personal effects had been removed and he was wearing fatigues with no insignia, but on request he'd been given a pad of paper and a soft-tipped pen. Now he was sitting on the end of the bunk with the notepad on his lap. On the top page he had drawn two columns: REAL and NOT REAL.

In the NOT REAL column he had written "wrong history," "wrong body," "wrong planet," "instantaneous intergalactic transport?" "thought about surfing -- ended up surfing," and "wished for RM -- RM appeared." In the REAL column he had written "feels real," and "can't control it." He put a question mark after the latter, with arrows to the surfing and RM items in the opposite column. Frowning, he added "RM says it's real." Then he crossed that out and wrote "all Cretans are liars" underneath.

With a muttered curse he ripped off the top page and headed the next CRAZY and NOT CRAZY. He stared at the paper for several minutes before scribbling "see page 1" and dropping the notepad to his side. He flopped back on the bed and lay with one arm across his eyes.

He heard his door guard greet someone and sat up just as the door opened. General Jack O'Neill came in and eyed John curiously. He stood quickly and saluted.

O'Neill waved a hand vaguely. "Colonel Sheppard, I presume?"

John blinked. "That's right."

"And from that phone call I guess you know who I am?"

"Yes, sir."

"McKay here thinks you're from some kind of parallel universe." O'Neill glanced at the door where McKay was hovering uncertainly. "Oh, come in and shut the door!" he snapped.

McKay came in, but kept the bunk positioned between himself and John.

"Well?" said O'Neill.

"Uh . . . Rodney is usually right, sir. But there's a lot that doesn't make sense."

"You think? So what else is new?"

McKay retrieved the discarded page of paper from the floor. "Wrong body?" he read. "Instantaneous intergalactic transport?"

"Yeah," said John. "Those are the parts that don't seem to fit with other reports I've seen about alternate realities."

"And based just on that, you decided this was some kind of virtual environment?" McKay's tone implied that would be a monumental feat of stupidity.

John shrugged, relaxing under the familiar weight of McKay's sarcasm. "Well, at least I've encountered those before. And there were some coincidences that made me wonder. You know, like the black cat in the Matrix."

"Oh, please! That movie had to be the most appalling exercise in illogic I've ever seen."

"It wasn't that bad," John protested.

"Human beings -- drugged humans with atrophied muscles -- as energy sources? Their nutrition and maintenance would require far more energy than the minimal heat return. It's a basic principle of thermodynamics!"

"Okay, so the premise had some flaws, but the movie was internally consistent. Mostly."

"And hey, cool effects," O'Neill put in.

John stiffened. "Yes, sir. The point is, I'm not sure if I'm from an alternate reality or not."

"But McKay's usually right, huh?"

John glanced at McKay, who had his chin up as if he expected ridicule. "He's brilliant, sir, and he comes through in a pinch. Based on my experience, there's no one I'd trust more."

McKay gaped as if no one had ever expressed faith in him before. Then he went thoughtful. With two sentences, John had apparently gone from probable axe murderer to okay guy in McKay's mind.

O'Neill cleared his throat. "Yeah, about your experience . . . What do you know about Atlantis?"

"Well, in my, uh, reality, or history, or whatever, I'm the ranking military officer on the Atlantis expedition."

"Huh." O'Neill looked him up and down assessingly.

"I was included on the expedition because I have the Ancient gene. Almost as strong as yours, sir."

O'Neill's pleasant, slightly goofy expression went blank.

"McKay was there, too. He's the chief scientist on the expedition. My version of it, anyway."

McKay sighed. "I was supposed to be, but --" He broke off at a shake of the head from O'Neill.

"We went to investigate an Ancient outpost and we found something that McKay said looked like -- what did he call it? -- a database interface? Except he said it also gave off energy like a quantum mirror. I got too close to it, and next thing I know I'm in California and no one at the SGC has ever heard of me."

The general stared long enough to make John uncomfortable, and McKay started to fidget. Then O'Neill sighed and rubbed at his forehead. "I hate this weird shit," he complained. "All right. McKay, take him to the infirmary and get him tested. Get the whole story from him and figure out if it makes sense. You --" He pointed at John. "There'll be a guard on you, so don't try anything funny. Once the tests are done, come to the briefing room and explain it to me in small words. Well? What are you waiting for, go, go!"

* * *

After what must have been a whirlwind tour of the spectacular views of Atlantis, Sheppard ended up lounging in the lab along with Teyla and Ronon.

Rodney tried to ignore their quiet conversation, snapping at Radek, "No no, we need the subspace data trace from the Ancient scanner at the moment it grabbed the Colonel's head."

"Rodney, you were not aiming scanner at the device then."

"It's _subspace_, non-directional! Do I have to explain everything?" Rodney grabbed for the scanner, but Radek pulled it away.

"So," Sheppard was saying in a low voice, "I'm the commander of this base?"

"Dr. Weir is leader of the expedition," Teyla corrected. "Colonel Sheppard commands the military personnel."

Rodney pointed at the data flowing across the screen. "Yes, that one! But further forward. Not that far, go back! Okay, slowly now . . ."

"I guess three years can make a hell of a difference," Sheppard went on. "How did I -- he get this command?"

"He shot his commanding officer," Ronon rumbled.

"Whoa! Wait, this isn't the universe with the beards, is it?" Sheppard's voice rose sharply.

Rodney jumped and twisted to glare at the interruption.

"Beards?" Teyla said doubtfully. "Dr. McKay once made a similar reference, but I did not understand it."

Rodney turned his eyes back to the large hanging screen. "There! Right there. Now increase the scale on the display. See that?"

"Butterfly signature," Radek breathed.

"Exactly. Four-fold symmetry. Two axes of reflection!"

In the background, Sheppard was telling Teyla and Ronon about Star Trek. "So in one episode there's this alternate universe where everyone -- well actually, just one or two people -- they have these wicked-looking beards, see? And they're all mean and evil, just looking out for themselves, always plotting and double-crossing each other, and they kill their leaders to get promoted. That sort of thing."

"Oh _please_!" Rodney snapped. "If we were evil we'd be taking advantage of you, or -- or using you to get an advantage over someone else, instead of wracking _my_ brains trying to figure out how to get you home!"

Sheppard pouted sheepishly. "I was just asking. Ronon said --"

"It was not like that," Teyla replied, with a dark look at Ronon. "Colonel Sumner was captured and . . . tortured. He was fatally injured. Major Sheppard shot him as an act of mercy to end his pain."

"Rodney. Rodney. What does butterfly reflection tell us in this context?" Radek was asking.

Rodney huffed impatiently. "It tells us the transference was two-way. Look, Carson said the brainwaves showed the presence of only one consciousness. And we know it isn't the Colonel's consciousness."

Teyla continued, "We were not in contact with your planet at the time, so Major Sheppard took command. Later, when contact with Earth was re-established, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel so that he could continue doing the same job."

"So you look for the subspace reflection," Radek mused. "And the signature tells us Colonel Sheppard has gone to the same universe where this other Sheppard came from."

Rodney snapped a finger at him. "Precisely! That's where we have to start looking."

Radek went to the whiteboard. "So this double transference, it implies an inversion of the diacritic matrix --"

"No, not just an inversion! We're dealing with two separate dimensions here. It has to be a _cross product_ of the two diacritic tensors . . . " Rodney snatched the marker away and started writing furiously.

In the corner, Sheppard was looking at Ronon suspiciously. "So, how long have you had that goatee?"

* * *

"Yeah, it looked a lot like that," said John, nodding at the display McKay had put up on a monitor in the briefing room. "The colors were different, and the surface was, um, sort of 3-D looking, but it was basically like that."

Standing at the foot of the table, McKay turned to the others in the room: General O'Neill, Dr. Jackson, and Colonel Carter, whom John had met but never really spoken to. Teal'c was apparently off-world and Mitchell was recovering from their last mission. Carter looked like she could have used some more rest as well, but she was focused intently on what McKay was saying. Jackson, nursing a mug of coffee, seemed as alert as when he had taken John by surprise that morning.

McKay was wrapping up his explanation. "From Colonel Sheppard's description, the frame extruded and grabbed his head, and a bright light flashed in his eyes."

"Sounds familiar," said O'Neill.

"As far as it goes, yes. But apparently Colonel Sheppard didn't get the Ancient database downloaded into his brain."

"You sure?" O'Neill turned to John. "How long ago was this?"

"Two days. Almost." It seemed less to John, who had grown accustomed to the twenty-eight hour days on Atlantis.

"So maybe the crazy talk just hasn't started yet." O'Neill looked around the room. "I mean, you said he has that Ancient gene, so why wouldn't it work the same on him as it did on me? Takes a few days."

Jackson spoke up. "Well, but didn't the, uh, the increased brain activity show up even before you started speaking Ancient, Jack?"

"Daniel's right, sir," Carter put in. "From the rate of increase you experienced, the change in neural activity should be detectable as early as one day after the exposure." She turned to McKay. "Did they do a PET scan?"

"Of course, and an MRI and EEG. All perfectly normal. So I'm thinking this device, although similar, had a different purpose."

John frowned. "What about what you said -- I mean, what my Rodney said -- about it being like a quantum mirror?"

McKay snapped his fingers and pointed at John. "That's the key. From your description of the scanner my, uh, counterpart was looking at, he was probably seeing a subspace echo from the device."

"Right!" Carter leaned forward. "Quantum mirrors reflect subspace signals, only with --"

"With a characteristic phase offset, yes." McKay sat at the table with a triumphant smile, not seeming to notice that Carter was annoyed by his interruption. "It's very distinctive if you've seen it before."

"So what does all this mean?" O'Neill demanded. "It's like a quantum mirror but it isn't? It's like an Ancient brain-scrambler but not really?"

McKay slumped a little. "Without actually seeing the device or some scan data, all we have to go on are the effects, really."

"And the effect is that it transferred Colonel Sheppard's consciousness, but not his body, to another universe," Carter mused.

"Another planet, in another galaxy, in another universe," John pointed out. "And it all happened in the blink of an eye."

"The location shift would be automatic," McKay said dismissively. "It's the quantum singularity -- the shift in dimensions -- which takes all the energy. And even that is less than you'd think, with the proper tuning."

"And you think the choice of which reality to transfer to was based on a stray thought about surfing?" Carter asked.

John shrugged. "It was on my mind, just a little before the thing grabbed my head."

McKay added, "And he's already confirmed that his universe is very similar to this one. Proximity requires less energy."

Carter nodded thoughtfully.

"Maybe this is a dumb question," said Jackson slowly, "but what happened to the John Sheppard from this world, when Colonel Sheppard suddenly got transferred into his body?"

"I was wondering the same thing," said O'Neill brightly, chin propped on fist.

"Yes yes, we thought of that already and checked his EEG. The brain waves appear to show only one consciousness present," McKay said.

"Would it show up in the brain waves?" Carter asked. "If the two Sheppards are nearly identical, they could have the same pattern."

"I don't feel like there's anyone else in here," John volunteered. "Not like when McKay was sharing his brain with --"

"What?" McKay demanded.

"Never mind. Long story. Anyway, I didn't recognize this guy's apartment or car or anything. I haven't had any blackouts since I got here. I think I'm just me. In a body that's mostly like mine, but not exactly."

"Sharing my brain with what?" McKay hissed at him.

Carter turned to McKay. "So you think the transference was two-way?"

"Huh?" McKay dragged his attention back. "Oh. Yes. Well, if I could see a subspace scan of the device I'd know for sure. It was something we had considered when the quantum mirror was first found. Why shouldn't the transference go both ways? It would solve the problem of entropic cascade failure and balance the mass conservation equations better."

"Wait, how would that work?" said Jackson. "Unless the person in the other universe was touching the mirror at the same time as the person in this universe."

"It _doesn't_ work, for exactly that reason. If the Daniel Jackson in universe A touches the mirror and transfers to universe B, the mirror can't instantaneously summon Daniel Jackson from wherever he is in universe B in order to transfer him to universe A. The energy cost would be prohibitive."

"Could be messy, too, if Daniel B is already dead and buried," said Jackson mildly.

"Can I just say, eww!" said O'Neill.

"But if the transference involves just consciousness, not bodies --" Carter began.

"The energy cost is less, and location isn't a factor," McKay finished, again missing her wince at the interruption. "In fact, since it conserves mass -- well, energy in this case -- and prevents entropic cascade, swapping two consciousnesses could turn out to be easier than transferring just one."

"Are you sure?" Carter asked. "The energy required just to violate the uncertainty principle twice instead of once --"

"But see, this way you can just take the cross product of the two --"

"Enough already!" said O'Neill. "Do the math later. It sounds like you know what probably happened, right? Colonel Sheppard is here in the wrong place, wrong body and so on, and Mr. Sheppard who belongs here is now there?"

McKay opened his mouth, but Carter cut him off with "Yes, sir, we think so."

"So, what do we do about it?"

"Can we send him back where he belongs?" Jackson asked.

McKay and Carter looked at each other.

"Well," Carter ventured, "since the original transference only required one of them to be in contact with the device --"

"It should only require one of them to change back, of course!" McKay finished.

"Unless it has a block to prevent reversals, like Machello's body-switching machine," Jackson pointed out.

"No no, the Ancients didn't operate like that," said McKay.

"You think they didn't," Carter retorted.

"Okay, so wait," said John, rubbing circles at his temples. "The device is in the Pegasus galaxy -- at least it was in my universe, and probably is in this one. So you're saying I need to travel back to Pegasus to get to the device again in order to get home?"

McKay left off glaring at Carter. "Nonononono, it's much simpler than that. My counterpart in your universe is going to reach the same conclusion we did and take _your_ counterpart back to the device. All you need to do is wait."

"Then why hasn't it happened yet?" John asked. "You just found out about it this morning and figured it out in a few hours. They've known about it for two days. How long am I supposed to wait?"

* * *

"So you're saying if Mr. Sheppard goes back to the outpost and activates the device again, the switch will be undone?" Elizabeth asked.

Sheppard leaned a shoulder on the door to her office and frowned as he listened.

Rodney shook his head. "No no, it's not that simple. We have no idea how the device determined which universe to switch with in the first place. There was no control mechanism like we had with the quantum mirror in Area 51."

"We do know it was a universe very similar to our own --" said Radek.

"Yes, it seems to have split off just about three years ago, which is very recent in cosmic terms," Rodney agreed.

"But this still leaves an incredible number of possible universes." Radek pushed his glasses up his nose.

"We need to figure out how to control which universe we're swapping with, or we'll just end up with a completely new Sheppard and send this Sheppard to some other place that still isn't his home."

"That doesn't sound good," Sheppard drawled.

"And there were no instructions aside from this inscription?" Elizabeth turned to her laptop, which was displaying an image from Rodney's scans. She traced the semicircle of Ancient symbols around the device. "'Learn what might have been, worlds apart,'" she read.

"Not so helpful," Sheppard commented.

"Right, that's what the device _does_," said Rodney, "but unfortunately there's nothing there about how to _undo_ it without making things even worse."

Radek added, "It's possible that there were once controls and perhaps instructions in the outer room --"

"But that room was vandalized," Rodney finished.

Elizabeth pursed her lips. "A lot of Ancient technology requires a mental component for operation. Could that be the case here?"

"There probably is a mental component, but something this complex requires more for full control," said Rodney.

"And we cannot test. If we take Mr. Sheppard to the outpost and switch him with wrong universe --"

"That would make the problem infinitely more complicated to untangle. We need to be careful here, or we might never get our Colonel Sheppard back."

Elizabeth sighed. "Understood. Take as much time as you need to be sure. Would it help to go back and examine the device again?"

Rodney shook his head. "I don't think so. I've done all the scans that can be done, short of triggering it again."

"Which we cannot do," Radek added.

Rodney cocked his head. "Unless . . . you don't suppose it would trigger for one of Carson's gene therapy mice?"

"A mouse?" said Sheppard. "Even if it worked, how could you tell if you got the wrong one back?"

Rodney grimaced. "Yes, good point."

Radek added, "And we would run the risk of overwriting memory buffer of last transfer."

"The memory buffer!" Rodney exclaimed. "If it's intact, and we can access the data without destroying it --"

"Then we could develop a test for correct universe to transfer to --" Radek continued.

"-- And maybe build our own control device!"

Elizabeth looked blankly between the two of them. "Well, good. It sounds like you have a plan. Now figure out if it will work. Tell me if there's anything you need."

"Yes yes, of course." Rodney waved absently at her as he and Radek left her office, still finishing each other's sentences.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McKay and Sheppard misconstrue each other. Twice.

John entered the SGC commissary and found McKay already there, wolfing down a plate of generic slop with familiar rapacity. John grinned and grabbed a pre-wrapped turkey sandwich for himself. The only dessert left was butterscotch pudding, which he hated, but he took one anyway. McKay looked up in surprise when John sat opposite him, and his eyes nearly bugged out when John pushed the pudding across the table to sit next to his own (chocolate -- he'd probably gotten the last one).

"So," said McKay, looking as if no one had ever given him food before. "You and me -- the other McKay -- we're, uh . . ." He made a gesture with two fingers twined together.

Mouth full of turkey sandwich, John only nodded.

"Huh." McKay scraped up the last bite of his stew absently. "Well. I can't say I thought of myself as . . . okay, yes, I'm an open-minded guy. But no one ever . . . huh."

"What's the matter, the folks at the SGC can't recognize quality when it comes wrapped in blistering sarcasm?"

McKay blushed faintly. "It's true, I've been told I can be a bit abrasive."

John lifted the sandwich to hide his smile.

"But Colonel Carter -- I've always found her very attractive, you know --"

"I know."

"But she doesn't seem to return the sentiment." McKay pushed his plate aside and started on the pudding -- butterscotch first.

"Maybe it would help if you worked _with_ her instead of competing against her all the time."

McKay crimped his lips, not denying the charge. "She's the only one I've ever met who can keep up with me. I guess I get carried away, not having to hold back and speak in small words all the time."

"Zelenka keeps up with you, and you don't have that problem with him." John considered. "Maybe because he doesn't care when you interrupt and yell at him. He just yells back. Or curses in Czech, which is probably worse because you can't answer him."

"Czech? You don't mean that Czech engineer, do you? He hardly has any theory background. He only has one PhD, for god's sake!"

John nearly choked on his drink. "Hey, c'mon. Carter only has one PhD, right?"

"Well yes, but she's . . ." He waved his spoon to convey the ineffable wonder of Sam Carter. "I wouldn't have thought Zelinsky was in her class."

John shrugged. "He keeps up with you, anyway. Maybe Atlantis brings out the best in him."

"Yeah, right." McKay chased the last molecules of chocolate pudding around the bottom of the cup.

"No, I'm serious. I don't know if it's the isolation or something about the city, but it makes a lot of us . . . we do more than we ever thought we could."

"You miss it, don't you?" McKay looked wistful, or jealous, or something.

"The city, yeah, but also the people. All of them." He grinned. "I was just wishing Rodney was here when you showed up. Sort of threw me for a loop."

McKay fidgeted with his empty pudding cups. "Well, I know I'm not your Rodney Mckay, but, that is, uh . . . maybe we could -- hmm. You could tell me about Atlantis? I'd like that. Someplace a little more, uh, private, you know?"

John nodded, glancing at the nearest diners a few tables away. Everyone had to have high clearance just to get to this level of the building, but that didn't mean they should be hearing about the Atlantis expedition -- even an Atlantis in another universe. "Sure. General O'Neill assigned me a new room, with no guard and a door that locks on the inside."

He expected a chuckle for that, but instead McKay seemed to be blushing as he stood. "Right. Well . . . if you're done?"

John didn't realize they'd been having two different conversations until they reached his new guest quarters and McKay pushed him back against the door with an awkward, desperate kiss.

* * *

Rodney went back to his lab after dinner and kept working until well past midnight, hours after Radek had left. He stopped when his eyes were stinging too much to read the screen anymore. His powerbar stash was getting low, so he headed to the mess hall for a snack.

He stepped out of the transporter to find Sheppard standing there, looking tousled and bewildered. "Hey, McKay," he greeted. "What time does the sun come up around here?"

Rodney blinked. "Not for another five or six hours."

"Huh? I conked out a few hours after dinner -- maybe 21:30 -- and I feel like I've had at least seven hours of sleep, so --"

Rodney smirked. "Twenty-eight hour day, Mr. Almost Mensa. You're not in Kansas anymore." He saw that Sheppard was wearing the colonel's wristband but not his watch, which was programmed for the Atlantis day.

"Oh." Sheppard looked bewildered. "So that makes it, uh . . ."

"Just past one o'clock."

"Great. My stomach thinks it's time for breakfast -- or maybe lunch, even. Where does a guy get some grub here after hours?"

Rodney headed for the kitchen. "That's what I'm here for. I'll show you."

Soon they were each set with a bowl of the lumpy pudding the cooks had been calling tapiogurt. Rodney added slices of a native fruit that was not in the citrus family. Sheppard declined the fruit but chose to scoop the pudding up with a spiced flatbread.

Rodney made a face. "I don't think Alton Brown would approve," he said.

"Chairman Kaga would," Sheppard retorted.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Fine, if you trust the judgment of a man with the fashion sense of Liberace." Watching Sheppard lick pudding from his fingers made Rodney's breath catch oddly, so he just concentrated on his food until it was gone. "Come on, finish that up and I'll show you where the dirty dishes go."

"We can't all be members of the Hoover family." Sheppard scooped up another bite and made a show of savoring it.

Rodney sighed. "Look, while you were snoring, I was working on a way to get you home. And I need at least four hours of sleep if I'm going to be any good at all tomorrow --"

"Okay, okay, I'm hurrying." Sheppard ducked his head, but it didn't hide his grin.

Snack finished and dishes stowed, Sheppard asked, "Hey, uh, would you mind showing me the way back to my quarters? I got a little turned around when I was looking for it, before."

"Wait, you said you slept already."

"Yeah, there's a little room just down the hall -- looked like it was hooked up for video?"

"Oh yes, we have movie nights there sometimes. Especially right after the Daedalus comes in."

"There was this, uh, I don't know if it was a couch or a bed, but it was long enough to stretch out on, and next thing I knew it was one in the morning. Or something."

"Fine, I'll show you the living quarters. Come this way." Rodney crooked a finger.

Sheppard smirked. "Love to, thanks."

Rodney looked at him suspiciously, but showed him the right node to press on the transporter map. Soon they were in front of the colonel's door. "I'm down that hall: right at the corner, third door on the left. Elizabeth has a sort of penthouse three levels up from here. Teyla and Ronon are over on the other side of the central tower."

"Okay." Sheppard lingered in the doorway with a lost-puppy look.

"What now?" Rodney snapped.

"Um, I had some trouble with the controls for the water in that little washroom near the messhall. Is the shower complicated? _Is_ there a shower?"

Rodney stomped past him to the little bathing alcove that branched off a corner of the room. "The Ancient controls are very simple. One control for temperature -- slide the bar up to make it hotter, but don't go to the top or you'll scald yourself. And one control for flow rate. Apparently they showered sitting down. Some people have raised their showerheads, but it's not so bad once you get used to it. Clear?" Rodney started to turn and jumped when he found Sheppard pressed close behind him.

Sheppard leaned in, face turned to the shower controls but breath tickling Rodney's ear. "Seems easy enough." He turned his head slowly and nuzzled Rodney's neck.

* * *

"Mmlph!" said John around a mouthful of tongue. He pushed at McKay's shoulders and they moved apart, staring at each other, panting. "What the --"

McKay leaned in again and John squirmed sideways and back, banging his head against the door. "No, wait -- I'm not -- we're not --"

"Dammit!" McKay slammed his hands against the wood of the door before spinning away in agitation. "I'm so unappealing I can't even compete with myself?"

"What? No! It's not that, Rodney, you -- you're plenty appealing, I mean, it's just --" John couldn't get his mouth to form a complete sentence. Or his brain, for that matter.

"So -- what?" McKay's eyes flicked down to John's crotch. "What's wrong, then? Are you and he exclusive?"

"Huh?" He realized his body was reacting in a predictable way to being kissed. Maybe that was why his brain wasn't working.

"Because I think this should be a loophole in the exclusivity clause. I mean, when you think about it, I _am_ him, sort of. And you're sort of not really you -- not your body, exactly."

"No! We're not. Not not-exclusive, I mean, we aren't even --"

"Good, so let's try this again, John."

Somehow, the sound of his name in Rodney McKay's mouth was the sexiest thing John had ever heard, and he couldn't manage anything in reply except a pitiful, questioning sort of whimper.

This time, McKay took the precaution of grabbing John's head in his hands before moving in. He tasted like chocolate pudding with a hint of butterscotch. His lips were thin but very mobile, and his tongue was pretty clever too. His body was a solid, warm wall holding John in place -- a wall with some interesting bumps to rub against.

And really, John had never had an objection to broad shoulders and a friendly ass. He'd just been living in a close-knit society rife with gossip, and it was starting to look like there was hope for his military career after all . . . but hell, if going off the base to have a little fun was discreet enough for Captain Sheppard and traveling offworld was good enough for Major Sheppard, surely another universe could handle Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard's secrets.

He mirrored McKay's grip on his head and pushed the other man back gently. "Rodney." His voice had gone deep and husky. "Are you sure?"

The blue eyes had almost been overtaken by wide black pupils, as if McKay were drinking in every photon that touched John. "Oh yes." McKay ran his hands down over the borrowed blue fatigues. "I'm sure, John. Just, uh, be patient, okay? I haven't done this before." He looked down where their hips were still jostling against each other. "But I think I'll pick it up pretty quickly." Then he dropped to his knees.

John's head thudded against the door again, but he was feeling no pain.

* * *

Rodney shivered. "What -- _ahem!_ \-- what are you doing, Colonel?"

"Not a colonel, remember?" Sheppard murmured against the sensitive skin of Rodney's neck. "Just John."

"J-John?" Rodney voice squeaked embarrassingly. He turned himself around in the cramped space and tried to shoulder Sheppard backward, but they just ended up plastered together from chest to hip. "I, I don't think this is really appropriate . . ."

"Why not?" Sheppard ducked in for a kiss, but Rodney turned his head aside at the last moment and got a long lick along his jaw instead.

"C-Colonel Sheppard would never --"

"Oh believe me, Rodney, he would." Sheppard's mouth quirked in a half-grin. "If he didn't have to worry about idiot regulations and fraternizing with a team member, he definitely would."

Rodney stared. "You really think so?"

"Oh, yeah." Sheppard brought his hands up to cradle Rodney's, thumbs rubbing slow circles over his nipples. "I noticed you right away. I've always had a thing for the smart ones, the fast talkers with the clever hands. And from the way you look at me, I'm guessing you've wanted _him_ for a long time. So here's your chance."

"Oh!" Rodney's mouth was unaccountably dry. "I may have noticed -- that is -- he -- you're very hot." A cascade of images tumbled through his mind: Colonel Sheppard at his most appealing and infuriating.

"Thank you." Sheppard leaned forward and licked at Rodney's lips.

Rudney pulled his head back, still nervous. "That is -- I noticed in a sort of I-wish-I-were-that-hot kind of way, not a he's-hot-I-want-to-fuck-him kind of way." That wasn't entirely true; a year ago, when he'd heard that Major Sheppard survived assaulting a Hive ship with a puddlejumper, Rodney had felt an urge to kiss the man. But other concerns came up, and by the time Rodney saw Major Sheppard again in person, the urge was suppressed.

"Whyever not?" Sheppard shimmied his hips a little.

"Oh, god." Tiny tremors were running through Rodney's body, centered where Sheppard was still teasing his nipples. "I'm . . . straight?"

"Try again, Rodney." Sheppard bent his head forward again, and this time Rodney melted, accepted him, and opened to let him in.

* * *

McKay turned out to be a talker during sex -- also a moaner, grunter, gasper, and yeller -- which wasn't really a surprise. The hysterical laughter after he came was a little more weird. John didn't think he'd ever heard more than a sarcastic chuckle out of Rodney, but here he was convulsed across John's back, roaring uncontrollably. After being rolled off to one side and petted soothingly for a few minutes, he managed to gasp out a few words through the dimishing giggles to say that it wasn't personal, just something he did sometimes.

"Only _snicker_ after really _snort_ really good ssssehehehex," McKay panted. Then he let out a deflating sort of sigh and fell asleep.

It was early evening, but John had traveled a long way and would just as soon have slept the night, if he could only get his mind to stop working. Fifteen minutes later, he was barely dozing when McKay started to stir. With a resigned sigh, John turned on his side to watch, wondering if his own Rodney woke up with the same little noises and grimaces.

McKay seemed smaller at the SGC, somehow, and John had wondered if it was the bunker architecture or all the tall, muscular people wandering around. Yet on Atlantis Rodney always managed to look solid, no matter who was standing next to him. Even compared to Ronon, Rodney just made the Satedan look overgrown instead of seeming small himself.

Sheppard wasn't thinking about the possibility that he would never see his Rodney, or his Atlantis, again. It was one of those outcomes, like being shot down, that a pilot was always aware of but took care not to examine too closely. It was simply unacceptable, and he would have to make sure it didn't come to that.

McKay's eyes opened, a deep blue in the light of the desk lamp they had left on. He blinked and licked his lips. "Oh."

John suppressed a laugh of his own. "Yep. Still here."

McKay frowned and reached out, a finger tracing across John's cheek to stop at the corner of his mouth. "Are you -- um, I mean, did I -- huh. I fell asleep."

"Yep."

"Sorry. You okay?"

This time John did laugh. "It was great, Rodney. I'll be feeling it for a day or two, but in a good way." John's counterpart must have been getting some action lately, because this body stretched easily, and McKay's slightly clumsy enthusiasm hadn't really hurt.

"Oh. Well, good. Sorry about the laughing thing. It's just --" McKay waved a hand vaguely and sat up. With his hair standing in wisps and his eyes blinking sleepily, he reminded John strangely of Cindy Lu Who. "You got anything to eat in here?"

"Uh, I don't know. I don't think so." John looked around. The fatigues he had been wearing were in an elongated heap from the door to the bed, jumbled with McKay's clothes. The clothes and effects that had been taken from him when he was brought to the mountain were in a neat pile on the desk. The hastily-packed duffel that had apparently been brought from the Mustang -- he hoped they'd put the car back together properly after searching it -- had gotten kicked off the far side of the bed.

McKay located the duffel and started rummaging through it hopefully, but none of the snacks Sheppard had bought on the road seemed to be in there.

"Didn't we just eat, anyway?"

"Well, yes, but I get hungry when, uh . . ." McKay blushed, apparently too shy to talk about things he'd been eager enough to do at the time.

"Yeah, sure. You're always hungry, McKay." John stood and stretched, aware of eyes tracing down his back, then started picking up the clothes they'd left on the floor. "I take extra powerbars and MREs on missions just for you, but I didn't expect to meet you when I packed to drive here." He tossed McKay's clothes in his general direction and folded the fatigues quickly before reaching for his own civvies.

McKay stared, the shirt he had caught dangling loosely from his hand. "On missions? You take me -- my double -- on missions?"

"Well yeah, since he's a member of my team."

McKay's eyes were huge. "I'm on a gate team?"

"Not just _a_ team: _my_ team, the first contact team, Atlantis's answer to SG-1." John grinned at the scientist's astonishment as he stepped into his jeans.

"And we -- that works out okay? For you?"

John grabbed his duffel and dug through it for a cleaner shirt. "You saved the city -- and the team, and me -- more times than I can count. You even helped save Earth and pretty much the whole Milky Way galaxy a couple months ago."

McKay just sat on the end of the bed, his mouth slightly open. Whatever he'd been doing at the SGC, apparently it didn't provide much fuel for an ego like his, because he was having a lot of trouble with the idea of himself as a hero. Maybe that was part of why he seemed smaller here, too.

"Come on, Rodney, get dressed. I thought you wanted to eat?"

McKay blinked. "But . . . you said --"

"We had dinner pretty early. I'm betting there are still a few servings left. If not, we can grab one of those snack packs they keep in the commissary."

Now McKay was pulling his clothes on. "But you were going to tell me about Atlantis."

"You mean that wasn't just a ploy to get some privacy?"

"Well. Maybe a little." He was blushing again. "I still want to hear about it, though. I was supposed to -- that is, I'm still interested."

"Alright. If there's anyone in the mess, we can take the food somewhere else."

"Okay, great, what are you waiting for?" McKay finished dressing by squeezing into his shoes without untying them, and reached for the door.

"Uh, you might want to use this, first." John held out a comb. "With me, no one can tell, but your hair kinda telegraphs its recent history."

McKay checked the mirror over the desk and squeaked in dismay.

* * *

Rodney dreamed that Sheppard pulled his face off like one of those latex masks in Mission: Impossible, and underneath the mask he was really Colonel Simmons. He chased Rodney through Atlantis and finally cornered him in the damaged nanovirus lab. As Simmons-with-Sheppard-hair approached, crunching over the broken glass-like polymer on the floor, his eyes glowed. He pulled a larval Goa'uld out of his pants and held it up threateningly -- but then, bizarrely, he began to kiss and lick it. Even more strangely, Rodney could feel the kisses on himself, as if someone were --

He sat up with a gasp and threw the covers back.

Sheppard grinned and pulled his mouth free. "Morning."

The sky outside the window was pale grey with pre-dawn light, the view not the one Rodney was used to. He was in Sheppard's room -- the Colonel's room.

"Oh my god."

"No, it wasn't a dream." Sheppard bent his head for another taste.

"Oh my god." Rodney scrambled backward, desperately sorting what 'wasn't a dream' from what he actually had dreamed. The reality wasn't as disturbing, but it was still a shock in the light of almost-day. "Oh no. I can't believe I, we -- in Colonel Sheppard's bed!"

Sheppard sighed and sat up. "I told you, Rodney, he wouldn't have a problem with it. I'm sure he would have done it himself if he didn't have, um, other things to worry about."

"So you say. But he's never given me any indication that he, he wanted . . . anything like that!"

"You mean he hasn't been flirting with you since day one?" Sheppard grinned wickedly.

"Flirting?"

"That's the impression I got."

"From where? From who?!"

Sheppard shrugged. "Everything anyone's said about your precious colonel. The way you look at me. The way no one's surprised when I flirt with you." He cupped Rodney's cheek tenderly. "And like I said, genius, you're just my type."

"But not his!"

Sheppard was starting to look a little annoyed. "Fine, he's a stiff-rumped straight arrow, like you say. Are you sure you really want him back?"

"Wait a minute." Rodney stared, putting the pieces together. "You're trying to suborn me. You want Atlantis for yourself!"

"What? No, wait --"

Rodney pushed him away and jumped out of the bed, starting to pace. "I should have seen it before. Things must be worse in your universe. You said you were discharged -- what for? Are you in jail or something? Oh god -- that's it, isn't it?"

"No! I'm not --"

Rodney's mind was racing, his breath coming faster. "And Sheppard got transferred into your place. He's probably the bitch of cell block 8 by now, and you're trying to keep me from getting him back!"

"I'm not trying to keep you from doing anything!" Sheppard climbed out of the wrecked bed and started to approach Rodney, hands held out placatingly.

"Stay back! I warn you, if you try anything I'll, I'll --" Rodney looked around the room for something he could use to defend himself, found his clothes instead and frantically started pulling them on. "Kill me and they'll find out what you're up to, I swear!"

"Kill --! Rodney, I'm not going to hurt you."

"Yeah, and you're not going to stop me, either. So just, just stay away from me, okay? I won't tell anyone about this unless you try to pull something else -- then you'll end up in the brig. And trust me, you won't like that any better than Leavenworth."

"This is crazy. McKay, listen to me. I _wasn't_ in jail!"

Rodney tucked his boots and socks under one arm and pointed threateningly. "Just stay out of my way!" He stormed at the door and was a little surprised when it let him through at once. Maybe Sheppard hadn't figured out how to control the Ancient technology yet -- but it was too late; Rodney was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McKay and Sheppard get into trouble, together and separately.

As it turned out, the only other people in the commissary were O'Neill and Jackson. O'Neill made a face when McKay sat at their table, but he listened as John started talking about Atlantis. Jackson wanted to know about the Ancients' culture and McKay asked about their technology, but as soon as John described the Wraith and their battle against the Ancients, O'Neill interrupted and said they should move the discussion to the conference room.

On the way, they somehow picked up Colonel Mitchell. He had a nasty bruise on his temple and the look of a man with a thumping headache, but he greeted O'Neill's narrow-eyed look with a claim that he'd been released from the infirmary and was certainly capable of sitting in a comfortable chair to hear Sheppard's story.

Carter wasn't around for the meeting, having gone home to be with her two adopted children -- both from off world. One was apparently a descended Ancient with brain damage, which boggled John. But he didn't get to ask about it since McKay digressed into a rant about motherhood being a waste of a brilliant mind.

Once McKay had been stifled, John found himself trying to condense two years of adventures and descriptions of the Pegasus galaxy into a short description. He'd barely gotten up to the Wraith siege at the end of their first year before the discussion devolved into might-have-beens.

"It could have turned out totally different for the guys we sent," Mitchell argued. "I mean, who's to say they woke up the Wraith like you did?"

John had worried this one over on too many sleepless nights. "Even if they didn't get people captured on their first offworld trip -- even if they didn't kill the keeper -- they'd still encounter the Wraith sooner or later. Most of them were hibernating, but not all. It would just take one member of the expedition to get culled and interrogated, and the Wraith would be after them all. They'd want to know more about Earth. They'd probably wake up at least one Hive to attack Atlantis, maybe more."

"But Sumner would still be in charge," said O'Neill, with a measuring gaze. "He'd handle things a lot differently from you."

McKay shook his head in exasperation. "Different or not, it doesn't matter. It _didn't_ matter. We sent two hundred people out there two years ago and we haven't heard from them. We sent a ship after them and it disappeared without a trace."

John startled at this news. He had guessed about the lost expedition, but not about the Daedalus.

McKay continued, "Obviously they're in some kind of trouble, and there's a good chance it's these Wraith Colonel Sheppard is talking about."

"Maybe, maybe not," Mitchell insisted.

Jackson stepped in. "What if they stayed on Atlantis and never went off-world? Then they wouldn't meet the Wraith."

"They wouldn't have much to eat after a few months, either!" McKay retorted.

"Look, we went through the gate in the first place looking for an evacuation site because the ZPMs were depleted and the city was about to -- ah, hell." John rubbed his face wearily. "I forgot."

"Forgot what?" asked Jackson and McKay in ragged stereo.

"The first time my expedition went to Atlantis, the shield failed, the city flooded, and everybody drowned."

"Everybody?" said Mitchell.

"You seem pretty lively for a dead guy," O'Neill remarked.

"First time?" McKay asked, latching onto the critical point.

"Everybody except Dr. Weir. She got sent back in time to just before the Ancients left Atlantis."

"Wait, sent back in time?" McKay demanded. "Ten thousand _years_?"

"Yeah, there was this one Ancient who was working on a time machine, and he just left it lying around for anyone to stumble onto. Anyway, when he heard Elizabeth's story he set it up so the city would rise to the surface if the shields failed. And that's the only reason the expedition in _my_ timeline survived."

"And you learned about this how?" asked Jackson.

"We found the time-traveling Weir waiting in a stasis chamber. It wasn't perfect and she was aged to like a hundred years old, but that's not the point."

"So what is the point?" O'Neill asked.

"The only reason the time machine worked in the first place was because I touched it. I have the Ancient gene more strongly than anyone else in the expedition." John looked around the table. "Don't you get it? If the John Sheppard from this universe didn't go to Atlantis, there was no one to set off the time machine and make it possible for the city to rise."

There was a long silence. McKay wouldn't meet his eyes. Then Jackson coughed uneasily and said, "Actually, there was someone on the expedition who had a gene as strong as yours."

John blinked. "In my reality we only know of me and General O'Neill who are like that."

Jackson squinted and rubbed his nose. "Yes, well -- Jack went on the expedition. In a sense."

O'Neill rolled his eyes. "My _clone_ went on the expedition."

"Uh . . ." John didn't think he'd heard about that one.

"A couple years ago, a renegade Asgard made a clone of Jack, aged him to adolescence, and gave him Jack's memories," Jackson explained quickly. "We stopped the Asgard from doing anything more, but then we were left with a spare teenage Jack O'Neill. He kept aging at an accelerated rate for a while, but then it slowed down to normal."

"He was like eighteen when the expedition left, right?" Mitchell said.

"Physically," O'Neill grumbled.

"Dr. Weir talked him into going," Jackson added.

"He was probably happy to get out of going to college," said O'Neill darkly.

"Weir pulled some strings and got him a commission as a lieutenant in the Air Force."

"At eighteen?" John protested.

Jackson shrugged. "Whatever age he looked, he had all of Jack's knowledge and skills."

"Just not the bad knees," said O'Neill.

John tried to make sense out of this. "Okay, so you sent along someone with the strong gene. _If_ he found the time machine, maybe someone got sent back in time and it all worked out. Maybe they didn't all drown. Maybe. I still think they'd run into the Wraith, sooner or later."

"Fine," said McKay, "but even that doesn't explain why we never heard back from them. You woke the Wraith, but you still got word back to Earth."

Mitchell shrugged. "So maybe they did all drown, then."

"Sure, and maybe the Daedalus ran into an iceberg on her maiden voyage! No, that theory just doesn't explain it all. Something nasty got hold of the ship as well as the city."

"My first guess would still be the Wraith, but there are plenty of other bad guys out there," said John. "There was this energy-sucking cloud thing that almost fried us all, our first week there. If it hadn't been for Rodney . . . " He trailed off and turned to look at the scientist next to him.

"What?"

"Maybe that was it. McKay pulled our asses out of the fire so many times -- if he wasn't on the expedition, we'd all be dead. And he _wasn't_ on your expedition."

McKay looked as if he wasn't sure whether to be pleased or appalled that his absence could have such an impact.

"Aw, c'mon, there were a lot of good people on that team," said Mitchell. "Nobody's irreplaceable."

"Thank you for that insight, Colonel," said O'Neill a little sharply. Mitchell winced and shut up.

"You never did tell me why you stayed behind," John said to McKay. "Why aren't you in Atlantis now?"

McKay looked away, his mouth slanting down unhappily. "I was sick. I had a . . . parasitic infection."

"He got implanted with a Goa'uld," said O'Neill plainly.

"Whoa!" John didn't like the thought of Rodney with eyes glowing malevolently.

McKay addressed the table. "The Trust wanted to place someone inside the expedition."

Jackson, chin propped on fist, said innocently, "Sam was the one who figured it out. She said he was too good at flirting and too bad at physics."

"Obviously not the real Mc -- Kay," O'Neill drawled.

"Yes, thank you!" McKay snapped. "I've never heard that one before."

"You tipped her off on purpose, didn't you?" said John. "Way to go, Rodney!"

"It was more that my brain is a finely-tuned machine that doesn't work as well when it's under control of a ham-handed alien parasite."

"Goa'uld have hands?" John asked, straight-faced.

"Not so much," said O'Neill.

McKay continued in a rush of words, "It was discovered the day before the expedition left. The removal didn't go smoothly, and I had some lingering neurological problems. All resolved now, fortunately, but at the time the Daedalus broke orbit I still wasn't cleared to go along."

Despite all the banter, the story disturbed John. Alien possession followed by a year-long illness -- that could certainly explain why McKay seemed smaller and less confident in this universe.

"Speaking of the Daedalus," O'Neill said firmly, and turned to John. "Your idea has the same problem as the drowning one. Maybe not having Encyclopedia McKay along would be a problem for the original Atlantis team, but that still doesn't explain what happened to the ship. Last we heard from them was five days out."

John frowned, putting the information together with other clues and realizing they'd never had a ZPM to send along with the ship. "Actually, Rodney did save the Daedalus once, but that was on their second trip to Pegasus. If they disappeared on the first trip, I'd guess either mechanical problems, or else they showed up in the middle of the Wraith siege like in my universe, but without the advance warning." He considered. "Or maybe the energy being ate them, after it was done with Atlantis. Or . . . hmm. I guess there's a lot of things that could have gone wrong."

"You know," said McKay slowly, "we don't have to speculate about this. We have a way of finding out."

O'Neill slapped the table in exasperation. "We've been over this, McKay. The committee won't approve sending the Odyssey to Pegasus if we don't even know what happened to the first two teams we sent. Intel from a parallel universe isn't going to change their minds."

"I'm not talking about the Odyssey, I'm talking about the Stargate. We can dial Atlantis and find out if they're still there."

Everyone stared at him. Once more, Jackson was the one to break the silence. "And how can we do that without a ZPM?"

"A little project I've been working on for a couple months now," said McKay. "I've been trying to replicate the power source that General O'Neill -- well, he was a Colonel then -- constructed to get to the Asgard homeworld."

"Right!" Jackson breathed. "Didn't you use a power crystal from a Jaffa staff for that, Jack? We have plenty of those lying around."

"You're talking about the power source that blew out the electrical grid for half of Colorado?" O'Neill demanded.

McKay huffed. "I can prevent that easily, with the right circuit breakers. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether I can keep the device from blowing _itself_ out. It might be a single-use power source."

"And what does Carter say about this?" Mitchell asked. "You _did_ run this by her, right?"

McKay flushed. "She, uh, she didn't think it was worth pursuing, at first. I've been working on it on the side. But look, she hasn't seen the latest output measurements --"

"How soon can you have it ready?" John asked.

McKay met his gaze and steadied. "If I set everything else aside . . . two days."

"Do it," said John, then remembered himself and looked to O'Neill. "Uh, if that's all right with you, General."

O'Neill waved a hand in resignation. "Fine. But I want Carter working with you on it. We don't dial without her say-so."

* * *

Rodney rushed into the conference room with Radek on his heels. "Okay, here's what we've worked out so far . . ." He froze. "What's he doing here?"

Sheppard was sitting between Teyla and Ronon in his trademark slouch.

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "I asked him to come. This does concern him."

Rodney coughed nervously. "Yes, right, I suppose it does. I just -- I wasn't expecting . . ."

"You said you'd made progress on your idea to get Colonel Sheppard back. I thought that would be of interest to your whole team."

"Ah, right. Well. So." Rodney hadn't prepared for a full briefing. Not that lack of preparation had ever stopped him before, but he was unsettled with Sheppard's eyes tracking him as if expecting an attack.

Radek looked at him briefly in puzzlement, then shrugged and started the explanation himself. "We have reviewed the scans Rodney made at the outpost, and also we studied archival data about the control device for the quantum mirror that SG-1 found."

Rodney picked up the thread. "Putting those together, we've constructed a program that ought to be able to interface with the device so that we can control which universe it switches with."

"Good!" said Elizabeth. "So you're ready to try it?"

"We have not entered the parameters for the diacritic tensor," Radek said.

"The, uh, the matrix of invariants which provides a description of the other universe," Rodney explained quickly. "We'll have to get the data from the device's memory buffer, assuming I can find a way to interface with it."

Teyla nodded comprehension. "You wish to return to the outpost."

"Right. Jumper in, a few minutes of work, and I should have all the information I need to set up the control program. I can be back inside an hour."

There were surprised looks around the table.

"'I?'" Teyla repeated.

"You're not going alone," said Ronon firmly.

Sheppard frowned.

"I can't authorize a solo offworld mission, Rodney. You know that," Elizabeth told him.

Rodney threw his hands up. "Alright, fine! I'll fly the jumper and do all the work, Ronon and Teyla can sit in the back and look menacing in case any of the _sand_ tries to attack me!"

"What about me?" said Sheppard, even as Elizabeth said, "Take Co-- Mr. Sheppard as well."

"What for?" Rodney demanded, crossing his arms.

"Is there some reason you don't want him along?" Elizabeth asked with a frown.

"Of course not! It's just -- there's no need. He's not the Colonel. He doesn't have gate experience."

"He does have military training as well as the Ancient gene," Elizabeth returned, glancing between the two of them.

"Which is a liability in this case, not an asset! What if he triggers the device prematurely? Better if he doesn't even get near the outpost until we're ready to try the swap."

Sheppard's eyes were narrowed darkly, his mouth set.

"In that case," said Elizabeth, "perhaps you should wait for Major Lorne to return, so his team can accompany you instead."

Rodney gaped. "But they won't be back for days! Anyway, Lorne has the gene too."

Elizabeth arched an eyebrow at him. "But not the natural gene. If you're concerned that the gene therapy could set the device off, perhaps Dr. Zelenka should go in your place."

Radek started to sputter. "Oh no, no -- I couldn't . . ."

"I have to go. He doesn't understand the systems as well as I do." Rodney glared at Elizabeth. "Okay fine, Sheppard can come too. But he'd better not touch anything. In fact, I don't even want him coming into the outpost!"

Sheppard just grinned. "I promise I'll be good, Rodney," he drawled.

"You can stay in the jumper."

"Great, I wanted a closer look at one of those things!" Sheppard rubbed his hands together in exaggerated anticipation.

"With Ronon!" Rodney added quickly. "To make sure you don't touch anything."

"All right!" Elizabeth interposed. "It's settled, then. You have gate time in one hour."

* * *

A few days later, they assembled in the control room overlooking the gate. Mitchell was propping up a wall; his bruised forehead had progressed to the spectacular multicolored stage, but he was no longer squinting in pain. Jackson drifted in the background also. Carter and Sergeant Harriman were running the computers, and McKay was off installing the new power unit.

"Carter, is this thing gonna work?" O'Neill asked.

She shrugged uneasily. "I'm not sure, sir. We never really understood how the original worked -- the unit you built. I'm not convinced Rodney's right about the details of the power source mechanism. And if that's wrong, the whole thing is wrong."

"It'll work," John murmured, hoping he was right. This wasn't actually his Rodney, despite the similarities.

O'Neill rubbed at his eyebrow. "But we're not going to blow out the grid, right? I won't have to apologize to the governor?"

"No sir, the circuits are buffered and isolated. The worst that will happen is the gate won't connect."

"All right then, let's try it." O'Neill keyed an intercom. "Siler, you all set down there?"

"Ready, sir," came the firm answer.

"Dial it up, Walter."

Harriman nodded and keyed in the sequence for Atlantis. "Chevron one encoded . . ."

John found his heart pumping as if he were getting ready for combat. It seemed to take forever for this gate to dial.

"Chevron seven encoded," said Harriman. "Chevron eight . . . locked."

As the wormhole splashed into being, the lights in the control room dimmed for a moment, then came back up. John blew out his breath and grinned at Carter, who just shrugged and turned back to her readouts.

"We have a stable wormhole, sir."

"Goody." O'Neill clapped his hands together. "Should we send a MALP?"

John shook his head. "Try to talk to them first, sir. If they're okay and they have the shield up, you'll just be wasting a MALP."

McKay came panting up the stairs. "The power unit blew out," he said grimly. "We won't be able to use it again."

O'Neill grimaced. "How long can we keep this wormhole open?"

"Once established, an intergalactic wormhole only draws about double the power of a normal one, and our generators can provide that easily. So we're only limited by wormhole physics, which means --"

"Thirty-eight minutes, sir," Carter finished, with just a hint of smugness as she cut McKay off.

"Right. Walter, get me a channel to talk to them." O'Neill leaned forward and waited for the sergeant's signal. "Atlantis, this is General O'Neill at the SGC. Anyone home?"

No image came up on the screens, but at length there was a voice. "SGC, this is Atlantis. We hear you."

O'Neill raised his eyebrows at the short response. "We just called to check in on you guys, since we haven't heard from you in so long."

"Everything's fine here, General."

John was getting a bad feeling, and from the looks being exchanged around the room, he wasn't the only one.

"Who am I talking to?" O'Neill asked.

The pause this time was definitely too long. "This is Sergeant Darfman, sir."

O'Neill looked to John, who shook his head; he didn't recognize the name or the voice. O'Neill snapped his fingers at Harriman, who started typing quickly.

"Well, Sergeant, I'd like to speak to Colonel Sumner. Is he around?"

"I'm afraid Colonel Sumner is on the casualty list, sir."

O'Neill cursed under his breath. "How about Dr. Weir, then?"

"She's not in the gate room at the moment, sir. It's the middle of the night here. But I can send for her."

"You do that, Sergeant. Let me know when she arrives. We'll keep the wormhole open." O'Neill turned to Carter and made throat-cutting motions to get her to close the outgoing signal. "Well?" he asked the room.

"I don't like it," John said at once. "It should be early evening there, not the middle of the night. And there wasn't anyone by that name on my version of the expedition."

"There was a Sergeant Dorfman on the original team, sir," said Harriman, pointing at a personnel file on his screen. "No Darfman, though."

"Anyone here who would know Dorfman?" O'Neill asked.

"I don't think so, sir. He was chosen for the Ancient gene; no previous SGC experience."

John spoke urgently. "General, I think we should prepare a strike team to go through the gate. I can lead them, I know the territory, but I can't do it alone."

O'Neill frowned at him. "Let's see what Liz has to say before we go off half-cocked."

"Yes sir, we'll keep them talking until we figure out what's going on, but we need to start getting ready now if we're even going to have the option."

O'Neill sighed and turned to the back of the room. "Mitchell, see what you can arrange."

"Sir." Mitchell hurried out, and Jackson faded after him.

"Open that channel for me again, Carter." O'Neill leaned in. "Sergeant, uh, Darfman. Any chance I could talk to Lieutenant O'Neill as well?"

Long pause. "I'm afraid he's . . . offworld right now, sir. I can take a message if you like, though."

"Uh, yeah, I'll get something ready. How about a video link?"

"That equipment is under maintenance right now, sir."

"Maintenance. Okay. Dr. Weir almost there?"

"Yes sir, here she comes right now."

"Hello?" said Weir's voice, sounding tentative. "General O'Neill, is that really you?"

O'Neill beamed. "Liz! Great to hear your voice. We were getting worried."

"Yes, well, we're . . . still here." She sounded a little hoarse.

"Did you get that care package we sent a year ago?"

"Care package? Oh! Yes, it arrived, but it was . . . damaged in shipping."

"That's too bad." Despite the light words, O'Neill looked grim at the loss of the Daedalus.

"I'm impressed you found a way to open this connection at all," Weir said. John noticed that she didn't ask specifically if they had a ZPM.

O'Neill was similarly short on specifics. "Well, you know, good old American -- uh, North American ingenuity." He glanced sidelong at a scowling McKay. "Sorry we didn't call sooner, but you know what it's like. If it isn't one alien race bent on total domination of the galaxy, it's another."

"Of course," she said faintly.

John shouldered in next to O'Neill. "Elizabeth!" he said jovially. "This is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. Remember me, from Antarctica?"

"John," Weir said slowly. "It's so good to hear your voice. Again."

He grinned in relief as she followed his lead. "Listen, I was hoping you could settle a little bet I have with the general here." John glanced at O'Neill, who was shooting him a powerful don't-mess-this-up glare. He chose his words carefully; they'd have to keep this obscure. "Speaking of alien races dominating the galaxy, which would you say is worse: the Dracula family, the Gestapo wannabes, or, uh, the snake-heads?" He didn't think it was likely they were having Goa'uld trouble, but he added them to the list to muddy the waters more.

Weir made a small noise. "Oh! Well, I'd say the -- the Draculas are very scary, but the, uh, the SS cause an awful lot of trouble, even though there aren't very many of them."

"Yeah, that's just what I was saying." John nodded, his suspicions confirmed.

O'Neill elbowed John aside. "So Liz, we figured after two years you might need some reinforcements. We can send some people through --"

"No!" said Weir sharply, her voice choked as if in pain. John's fists clenched. "No, we have, uh, we have a quarantine situation here. Nothing too dangerous, but it's, um, an unpleasant illness. Very . . . painful. I wouldn't want to risk infecting your people."

"I get ya," said O'Neill. "How about some supplies, then? We have food and medical supplies ready to go --"

John stepped in again. "We weren't sure what you might need in the way of ammunition and weapons. Would you like more C4, or does anti-aircraft weaponry sound more important?"

O'Neill stared like he was crazy, but John just made patting motions in the air. They had to sweeten the deal to make sure the Genii would open the shield.

"Yes, that would be useful," Weir said in the same choked voice. "Both of those, please." She paused for a long moment, and John thought he could hear murmuring in the background. "We could also use more naquadah generators, and maybe, uh, some nuclear bombs. Yes, send us all the nukes you can."

Now O'Neill was staring at the speaker as if _Weir_ was crazy. Carter and McKay had mouths gaping open, too.

John put on his cheerful voice again. "Sure, no problem, we'll get those lined up for you. It might take a few minutes though -- can we keep this wormhole open until then?"

"Yes, we can do that."

"That's great, Liz," said O'Neill. "Colonel Sheppard and I are going to go make those arrangements now, but you can talk with Sergeant Harriman here about exactly what you need. We also have some messages for you." He cut the mike and turned to Harriman. "Just string them along, keep them talking. Agree to anything she asks for, but say it will take time. Just -- stall them."

John suggested, "You can encrypt some junk files and send those in a databurst, say it's personal messages. Don't tell them anything specific about ships, or when we can dial again, or any of that."

"We _can't_ dial again!" Carter objected.

"Yeah, but we don't want them to know that," said O'Neill. "Everyone except Walter -- conference room, now."

When they were gathered around the table and Mitchell and Jackson had reappeared, the general glared at John. "Evidently you got more out of that conversation than I did."

"Yes, sir. Dr. Weir, um, indicated to me that Atlantis has been taken over by a strike force of Genii. They're one of the more advanced races of the Pegasus galaxy; their technology is similar to ours around World War II, but they also have some scavenged Ancient and Wraith equipment. They're very proud of their military power, and they resent the Earth people for . . . um, well, if I'm not there I'm not sure exactly what they hate us for, but evidently they thought we were worth attacking."

O'Neill rubbed his face. "Right. Mitchell, how's it going?"

"Two pallets of food, medical supplies, and a couple naquadah generators; three pallets with dummy crates that can hold two or three people each with sight-holes to fire through."

"Put nuclear warning labels on one of the crates; they'll open that one first." John considered lines of fire in the Atlantis gate room and shook his head doubtfully. "Nine people isn't a lot."

"For a one-way trip to another galaxy on fifteen minutes' notice, you'll be lucky if we can find that many." O'Neill turned back to Mitchell. "Unmarried volunteers only."

"Yes, sir."

"I'll go," said Jackson brightly.

O'Neill groaned. "Daniel, we've been over this. I need you here to --"

"-- look for weapons we can use against the Ori. Jack, don't you see, the Ancient database on Atlantis could be the best resource we have!"

"Daniel --"

"It's not really a one-way trip. You can persuade the committee to send the Odyssey now that we know Atlantis is still there. And maybe we can dial back -- Rodney, how long would it take you to build another of those power units?"

"Two weeks with the right materials, but --"

"You see? I might only be gone two weeks. Or two months at the outside if I have to wait for the Odyssey."

"Daniel --"

"He's right, sir," Mitchell spoke up. "I'd like to go too."

"No! Dammit, we're in a war of our own here --"

"And SG-1 is already split up to look for allies and weapons. Jackson can go through the database, and I can assess these Wraith as a potential future threat -- or a weapon themselves. Maybe we can turn them against the Ori, and then all we have to do is get out of their way."

John grimaced at the unlikeliness of that scenario, but didn't say anything.

Jackson's voice went low and urgent. "Jack. Those are our people out there -- ours more than Colonel Sheppard's -- and they need our help. We owe it to them."

O'Neill scrubbed a hand over his hair, then his face. "Carter?"

She shook her head. "I can't, sir. Orlin and Cassie need me here."

"Well, that's one less argument for me to lose." O'Neill looked at John.

"I have to go, sir. It could be a ticket back to my universe. But, uh, maybe you could take care of some things for the John Sheppard that belongs here . . . his car. Um, his job." John was really messing up the guy's life, but it couldn't be avoided.

"Alright, alright. McKay?"

McKay's chin jutted. "I'm already packed, and my cat is with a neighbor. I just need to pick up some equipment --"

"Great, fine, who else?"

"I've found a couple of volunteers, sir," said Mitchell, and held up a hand to forestall objections. "Unmarried, showed previous interest in the Atlantis expedition, gate team experience but not gate team leaders."

"Okay, so that's six. Can we get any more?"

"I'll keep trying, but there isn't a lot of time."

Carter looked at her watch. "We can keep the wormhole open another seventeen minutes, sir."

"All right. Mitchell, Sheppard, Jackson, McKay, you have ten minutes to gear up and get to the gate room. Take zats, P-90s and sidearms, and the enhanced flak jackets. Go, go!"

* * *

Much to Rodney's annoyance, Sheppard took the seat next to him and watched avidly while he piloted the jumper down into the control room and through the gate. The procedure was mostly automatic, but Rodney's hands clenched nervously on the sticks nonetheless.

"How do those controls work?" Sheppard asked, once they were in flight over the fifty kilometers of desert that stretched between the gate and the outpost. "They look sort of like chopper controls, but you're not working them that way."

"It's mostly controlled by intent," Rodney said.

"What, you fly it telepathically?"

"No! It's far more sophisticated than that, " Rodney snapped. "Certain chemicals in the skin and sweat of a person with the ATA gene are picked up by the handles of the control sticks, and that communicates what you want the jumper to do. You only have to actually move the sticks for fast maneuvers where there isn't time for the skin chemicals to adjust. If there's more than about two seconds to initiate a move, you just need to think about it."

"Oh, that's just cool!" Sheppard breathed.

Rodney started to grin in response, then pulled his mouth into a straight line. "Which _means_ I need to concentrate on flying instead of talking," he said primly. He set himself to ignore any further attempts at conversation, and focused on getting to the outpost and getting to work.

An hour later, he was more baffled than ever. He didn't want to dismantle the quantum consciousness mirror just yet, but he'd been unable to find anything in the tiny room that would allow him to interface with it -- aside from the head-trap itself, which he avoided. The outer room had probably held most of the controls for the device, but all that was gone now. Even the pillars that had once supported consoles of some kind had been gutted so that only a few burnt-out crystals and some lonely fibers remained.

"This doesn't make sense!" he complained, slamming shut the access panel on the last pillar.

"In what way?" Teyla asked from her post near the door. She gestured at the outpost around them. "This outer room was open and undefended, so it has been looted. The inner room was locked to any without the Ancient gene, so it is still intact."

"Fine, but if all the power and controls were out here, why does the device in the inner room still work?"

Teyla considered. "Could it have an internal power source?"

Rodney shook his head. "My scans show it isn't powered by a ZedPM. Any other power source is going to be bigger." He held his hands apart. "That plus the circuitry -- it wouldn't fit in that little mirror-frame thing. We're talking about a sizable piece of equipment, here, and I can't find it!"

"I am not a scientist . . ." said Teyla slowly.

Rodney huffed. "But you have an idea anyway. Fine, spit it out."

"The device is designed to connect with another universe. Could it be drawing power from there instead of from here?"

Rodney was momentarily diverted. "That's actually not a completely stupid question. Zero point modules work on a similar principle. But it can't be what's happening here because the device still needs power -- local power -- in order to access the other universe at all."

"If the power source is not inside the device, and not in another universe, then it must be here somewhere else."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, thank you, Dr. Emmagan. Now that you've figured that out, we can all go home. Wait, no we can't!" He went back to looking for access panels near the denuded sockets in the walls.

"When we first came here," said Teyla with only a slight edge to her voice, "I walked around the outside of the building and saw that it was larger than the interior. I thought there must be a hidden room. Then we found the inner room, and yet -- I do not think it can account for all the missing space."

"It can't?" Rodney stood and looked around thoughtfully, calculating angles and distances in his head. The building had an irregular footprint, so it was hard to visualize. "Where do you think the extra space would be?"

Teyla tilted her head. "Perhaps on either side of the inner room?" Those walls had no empty control sockets and no discernible seams.

"Yes, of course, behind the wall where the device hangs. I thought of that, but I don't want to just blast through the wall. There should be another . . . huh." Rodney tapped his headset. "Ronon, bring Sheppard in here. I need him to find a hidden door for me."

"Y'know, Rodney, I do have ears of my own," came Sheppard's drawl in response.

"Fine, get in here, then!"

"What do you want me to do?" Sheppard asked as he entered with Ronon looming behind him. "I thought you said I shouldn't touch anything."

"Just the wall. Over here first, then over there."

Sheppard laid a finger gingerly on the wall, which was of the same matte alloy as the walls of Atlantis but colored a deep green. "You said there was a hidden door. Should I tap around, or what?"

"Just run your hands over it, everywhere you can reach from knee-level on up. There has to be something that responds to the Ancient gene."

Within a minute, a tall narrow opening appeared in the corner, revealing banks of glowing crystals inside. Rodney made a happy grunt and pushed Sheppard aside for a better look, but soon he wasn't feeling so pleased with the discovery. He poked at his tablet computer and muttered darkly.

"What's wrong?" Sheppard demanded, peering around him at the crystals.

"Nearly half of these are burnt out. Not the most critical circuits, but there's an odd pattern to it. Not random." Rodney's fingers hovered over one, two, three discolored crystals. "And I'd swear some of these are inserted the wrong way. This one, see? It ought to be rotated and flipped. But this wasn't just mindless sabotage -- it was something very deliberate. Hmmm." He bent over his tablet again.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been tracing the circuit variations when Ronon's deep voice interrupted, "McKay, what's that blinking red light on your scanner?"

"Wh-huh?" He looked around a moment before finding the handheld Ancient scanner next to his knee. "That's just, uh, that's -- the Stargate is open. There's an incoming wormhole."

"What does that mean?" Sheppard asked, but Teyla overrode him: "How long has it been open?"

"Not sure," said Ronon. "I just noticed the flashing now, but I wasn't looking that way earlier."

"It can't be Atlantis," said Rodney. "They would have radioed us." He scrambled to his feet and collected computer, scanner, and tools, shoving them hastily into the pockets of his vest and pack. Experience told him he needed to be ready to move.

Teyla had her head cocked to one side, looking up at the ceiling and through it. "Wraith!" she spat.

"What?" Sheppard asked.

"Jumper's not cloaked," Ronon said, and ran outside. Teyla followed.

"Sheppard, wait!" Rodney yelled. "You have to close these doors so no one will find what's inside."

"What's going on? What's a Wraith?" Sheppard demanded as he tapped the doors.

"Didn't anyone tell you about -- never mind, no time now. Wraith are bad, just trust me on that. As in, thinking we're food kind of bad." Rodney approached the open doorway but didn't venture outside. He drew his sidearm, surprised at how much better he felt with it in his hand.

The jumper was gone -- invisible, he knew, but Sheppard muttered "What the hell?" over his shoulder.

The whine of a Wraith dart could be heard now, nearing rapidly. Rodney pressed Sheppard back away from the doorway and eyed the ceiling of the outpost, wondering if it would be enough to protect them from detection. Maybe they should retreat to the inner room with the door only Sheppard could open -- unless the Wraith blasted the entire outpost apart. Teyla and Ronon would be safe inside the cloaked jumper . . .

Just then, Ronon appeared out of thin air, standing in the path of the dart with his teeth bared and his eyes wild. He lifted his oversized handgun and aimed blast after blast at the approaching ship. The dart bobbled and wavered, but threw out a white beam nonetheless.

"Ronon!" Teyla ran into sight and tackled the big man.

Rodney had seen her push people out of the path of a culling beam with perfect grace and precision. But this time the irregular motion of the dart and Ronon's greater mass defeated her; they didn't get far enough out of the way. A moment later the white light passed over them, and they were gone.

"Oh, no. Nonono!" Rodney breathed, frozen with horror. First Sheppard, now Ronon and Teyla. He could barely wrap his mind around it: his whole team gone, in less than a week.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sheppard gets a crash course in jumper flying and goes on a running tour of Atlantis.

John was the first to get to the gate room, adjusting his gear on the way. He looked over the pallets being prepared and had a word with the techs who'd be pushing them through the gate.

McKay was next, carrying his gear rather than wearing it and followed closely by Carter with an armful of equipment. She immediately claimed his backpack and started to stow the things she was carrying.

McKay snapped at her as John manhandled him into a flak vest. "Careful with that, it's --"

"I know, Rodney," said Carter, pulling out one of McKay's shirts to wrap the fragile equipment in. "Why don't you let me worry about this stuff while you get yourself ready?"

"Forget the P-90," said John, who knew how bad McKay was with the recoil. "Just your sidearm and a zat, that will be good enough." He tightened the straps on McKay's thigh holster, carefully not looking to see if McKay had noticed how erotic this was. John was already half-hard, but that was nothing new; he nearly always went into a situation like that, at least until the projectiles started flying.

Lastly he handed McKay the zat. "You know how to use this?"

"Yes yes, I have actually been off-world, you know. Once. But it was with SG-1, so that's worth --"

"Great, can you show me how?"

McKay looked at him uncertainly.

"I'm serious -- my expedition wasn't issued any of these things."

"Oh. Right. Well, you arm it like this --" The snake-like weapon rose up as if ready to strike. "And fire with this, here. Unless they're really hopped up on something, the first shot stuns, the second kills, and the third --"

"Disintegrates, yeah, I knew that much."

"The range is about twenty meters. It will fire again as fast as you can press it, and it takes about ten minutes of continuous fire to run out of charge. It's pretty hard on computers and other equipment, so be careful where you aim it."

John smirked. McKay hadn't even _seen_ Atlantis yet, and he was already protective.

Mitchell showed up next, with three volunteers -- he had managed to drum up one more, after all. John looked at them and had to shake his head in surprise.

Mitchell did the honors. "Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, this is --"

"Major Lorne and Lieutenant Cadman, I know." He grinned at their surprised looks. "But I don't know you," he said to the third, a tiny blonde who looked about fifteen.

"Lieutenant Jennifer Hailey, sir!" She saluted.

For all that Mitchell had said he'd be choosing people with gate experience, she looked like she was straight out of the Academy. But she must be good, or she wouldn't be at the SGC. He set his doubts aside as Jackson and O'Neill entered the gate room, rigidly not speaking or looking at each other.

"Nine minutes, sir," Carter said.

O'Neill clapped his hands and rubbed them. "All right kiddies, listen up. Mitchell's the ranking officer, but Sheppard has the inside scoop on Atlantis -- so he calls the shots for the initial incursion. Once the situation is stable," he said to Mitchell, "you'll either report to Sumner or the other ranking officer present who actually belongs to the expedition, or take command yourself. Use your judgment."

"Yes, sir."

"We'll send the Odyssey to pick you up, but they have to come back from Chulak first -- so it'll be about a month before they can get to you guys. Tell the folks from the expedition we haven't abandoned them, and we're not abandoning you. Daniel . . ."

Jackson looked up from a check of his weapons with lifted eyebrows.

"Say hi to little Jack for me." O'Neill nodded to Sheppard. "All yours."

John crossed his hands over his P-90. "We have evidence that Atlantis has been taken over by a group called the Genii. We know Dr. Weir is a prisoner, and she said there weren't many Genii there, but she couldn't be specific about numbers on either side. We don't know who else survived from the original expedition or from the Daedalus.

"The bad guys are humans with a strong military tradition and a bad attitude. Their uniforms are green and their standard weapon is a heavy, ugly handgun with ten bullets that takes about a minute to reload. But they've probably stolen weapons and maybe uniforms from the Atlantis team, so be ready for automatic weapons. They may also have Wraith stunners -- alien-made energy weapon, makes a white flash and shorts out the nervous system, but we've never seen anyone die from it, even after multiple hits.

"We'll go in concealed in supply crates. The real supplies will go through the gate first to tie up their inspectors. Then the crate with me, McKay, and Hailey, followed by Mitchell and Jackson, then the last one with Lorne and Cadman. We need to take the control room right away -- then we can get intel from Dr. Weir and plan how to secure the rest of the city.

"We'll attack with zats so we can shoot first and sort out the good guys later. Everybody know what Dr. Weir looks like? Good. Don't shoot her, but anyone else is fair game, no matter what uniform. Arm your zats before going through the gate. When we open fire, they'll probably close the shield and block further arrivals -- that means _nobody fires_ until the last pallet is through the gate, clear?

"There are stairs both up and down from the gate level and concealed lines of fire all over the place, so we need to make the most of surprise. The control level is on an open balcony straight ahead and up from the gate; that's where the most important targets will be. Next most important is anyone who seems to be in charge, anyone holding a weapon or a radio, anyone trying to get away, and lastly anyone still standing."

"Four minutes," said Carter over the intercom from the control room.

"All right, let's get loaded up." John looked up to the blast window, where O'Neill was talking to the other end of the wormhole. "I hope to hell they open that shield," he muttered.

The first pallet was already trundling up the ramp to the gate. John followed McKay to the third pallet and helped him squeeze into a corner of the crate. McKay was white-faced and wide-eyed, trembling faintly.

"Kick that lever to bring down the two side walls of the crate, sir," said the technician handling the pallet.

"Good, thanks." John glanced over to where Cadman was adjusting Hailey's flak jacket, then crouched into the crate and pressed a quick kiss to the down-turned corner of McKay's mouth. "Atlantis is beautiful, Rodney. You're going to love it."

McKay took a deep breath and nodded.

Then Hailey hopped in, and within seconds they were rumbling up the ramp toward the event horizon.

* * *

"What was that?" Sheppard asked.

Rodney couldn't move.

Sheppard prodded his shoulder. "Rodney? What just happened? Did they get disintegrated, or what? Rodney!"

Rodney staggered, and his paralysis broke. He drew a deep, shuddering breath, checked to make sure the dart wasn't in sight, then ran out the door of the outpost. "Get to the jumper!" he yelled. "Come on, hurry!"

"The jumper's gone," shouted Sheppard, on his heels.

"No, it's not!" Rodney followed the footprints in the sand right up to where they disappeared, and two steps beyond. The puddlejumper sprang into being around him.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Sheppard as he entered.

Rodney holstered his gun and dove for the access under the DHD. "You fly," he said, pushing Sheppard toward the pilot's seat. "You're better at it, anyway."

"What! McKay, I've never flown one of these --"

"Don't worry, you're a natural. Just think about getting us back to the gate ahead of the Wraith!" Rodney crawled under the console and began frantically swapping circuits to make the DHD do something it wasn't designed to do: take over control of an open Stargate.

Sheppard took the controls, and within seconds they were hovering. "How do I know the way back to the gate, or where that Wraith thing is?" he demanded. Something must have appeared on the heads-up display, because a moment later he said, "Oh. Cool."

"Just get us moving!" Rodney snapped.

"Yes sir, General McKay, sir!"

Rodney ignored the jibe as he felt the light press of acceleration straining the inertial dampeners; that meant Sheppard was learning the controls already. He juggled the crystals, nearly dropping the one he needed. "Is it just the one dart?"

"Dart, you mean the ship? Um . . . yeah, there's only one on the display."

"Okay, when you get close enough to shoot --"

"Shoot!?"

"-- be sure to aim at the _nose_ of the dart only. Teyla and Ronon's signatures will be stored in the rear section -- that's our only hope of getting them back."

"Wait, you want me to get in a dogfight with an alien ship on an alien planet in an aircraft I've never even flown before?"

Rodney shoved the last crystal home. "Our Sheppard fought a dozen of them his first day in this galaxy, and won."

"Where are the firing controls on this thing, anyway?" Then: "Oh."

Rodney pulled himself up to the co-pilot's seat and slammed a hand on the DHD. "Yes!" he crowed as the inset in the corner of the screen showed the wormhole closing. "Now he can't get away."

"Guess we got him right where we want him," said Sheppard weakly. "And here he comes."

"It's okay, we're still cloaked," Rodney said, watching the dart hunt back and forth. Then it aimed straight at them, and he realized, "But flying this low, you'll kick up sand --"

The dart fired, Sheppard dodged, the jumper lurched. The cloak flickered a moment, then steadied; the DHD spat a shower of sparks.

"Dammit!" Rodney dropped down to check his handiwork. Of _course_ the improvised circuit was the first to overload. He wasn't going to be able to repair that quickly. He sat up again and stared blindly out the window, trying to think as Sheppard pulled the jumper up away from the betraying sand.

"Okay, I think I'm getting the hang of this," Sheppard said.

"He's dialing out again," Rodney pointed out. "I can't stop it from here. Set me down near the gate."

"What?"

"It's the only way I can keep him from getting away!"

"But you'll be naked out there!"

"So distract him!"

"I think I can do a little better than that." Sheppard maneuvered closer to the Stargate, his eyes flickering to the display that showed the dart coming around to fly into the newly-formed wormhole.

"Sheppard, what are you doing? You should have put me down!"

"Too late for that now," Sheppard muttered absently.

"He's getting too close."

"Wait for it . . ."

"Sheppard!"

At last the jumper fired a single drone. It whirled in a bewildering spiral and struck the ship's nose, obliterating the long stinger on the front. The dart yawed to one side but didn't veer since the shot had taken out its directional controls; it was flying purely on momentum now -- straight into the event horizon. Its broken nose clipped the edge of the gate on the way through.

"Oops," said Sheppard.

"Follow him, follow him, before the wormhole closes!" Rodney yelled, thumping the console.

Sheppard turned the jumper and zipped toward the gate.

"You should have set me down to close it, then this wouldn't have happened," Rodney muttered darkly.

"What do we do if there are more of those Wraith things on the other side?" Sheppard asked as the jumper lined up.

"Then we run. But if we're lucky, he might have gone for an uninhabited planet first. Two jumps home to make sure we couldn't follow him."

"If we're lucky," said Sheppard, watching the gate loom larger. "Here goes nothing."

* * *

He should have expected it, but when John saw Kolya standing on the balcony in an Atlantis uniform with red panels, fury clutched him by the throat. He had to breathe shallowly to keep himself from snarling, and he knew McKay, plastered against his side and facing back toward the gate, could feel the reaction.

The Genii commander was saying something threatening to Weir -- who wore rumpled civilian clothes -- and was half-shielded by her body, but that might be a coincidence since he didn't seem to be paying attention to the crates coming in. The two stood almost at the limit of that twenty-meter range McKay had mentioned, but Kolya was surely the most important target in the room. John just hoped the zat's aim was straight, since he wasn't used to sighting this kind of weapon.

McKay tapped John's hip to signal that the last pallet was through the gate, then shifted a little to take aim at one of the soldiers approaching their crate. John waited a five count to give Lorne and Cadman time to orient themselves, then shouted "Now!" and squeezed the firing button.

Kolya went down in a blue cone of lightning, but the edge of it caught Weir as well. Other zat blasts took down all the nearby targets on the gate level, but more soldiers were already moving forward with weapons raised. A 9mm barked somewhere, and John shot the two guards running to the front of the balcony. Most of the ones carrying P-90s were already down; the last was a confused woman firing fiercely into the crates of real supplies. John picked off one of a pair coming down the broad stairs, and someone else got the other.

More Genii fell, and now the only fire coming at them was from shielded positions around corners and behind pallets. Bullets splintered the front of their crate. John yelled "Scatter!" and kicked the lever to bring down the sides. Hailey went left, firing steadily. John pushed McKay off the pallet and followed him to the right.

Mitchell and Jackson were fast and accurate, hitting targets even when only a head or arm was visible. Lorne and Cadman had already cleared the guard positions at the rear of the room. No one was moving on the balcony.

And then it was quiet. The room was littered with bodies, mostly bloodless, about half of them in Atlantis uniforms and the rest in Genii green. John didn't pause for breath, but hauled McKay to his feet. "Come on!" He charged for the stairs.

At the top, he saw that Kolya and Weir were both conscious but barely moving. He shot Kolya again, not caring if that counted as a killing shot, and kicked a gun away from the body. He moved on to the console where he slammed a hand on the lockdown control. Doors slid, dropped, and spun shut, and the room was secure.

Mitchell clicked the mike on his shoulder. "SGC, we have control of the Atlantis gate room."

"Good luck with the rest of it," said O'Neill's voice over multiple radios. "We'll hope to hear from you soon. SGC out." The wormhole dissolved.

Someone moved nearby, and John spun with his weapon ready. A wide-eyed man crouched near the DHD with hands half-raised.

John shot him. "Sergeant Darfman, I presume?" he growled at the crumpled figure.

"These ones are all out," said McKay, checking the other bodies around the balcony. He was breathing heavily but seemed unhurt.

"Good. They need to be secured before they wake up." Dammit, John hadn't remembered to bring restraints.

"Mitchell's taking care of it."

Sure enough, on the gate level, Mitchell was making liberal use of a handful of plastic ties. Hailey and Lorne were both down, being tended by Jackson and Cadman. John wiped a tickle of blood from his cheek, decided it was just a scratch, and turned to Weir.

"Elizabeth, you okay?"

She nodded, trying clumsily to sit up. "Who --?"

McKay bent to help her.

"Dr. McKay!" she gasped. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."

"Oh, you know, just came to save the day. And I brought help!" he said smugly. "This is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. He's from, uh, from an alternate universe."

"It's a long story and I'll need your help with that later," said John, "but for now just take it that I know Atlantis pretty well. Tell me where your people are being held."

"Most are in cells -- Ancient cells --"

"In that obelisk-shaped building just north of the central tower? I know it." He nodded.

"But some of us -- myself, Dr. Grodin, Dr. Beckett, Captain O'Neill, and Colonel Caldwell -- have been held separately on the lower levels of this building."

John noted the gaps in the list of command personnel. No Sumner, no Zelenka, yes Grodin, check -- and _Captain_ O'Neill? But that wasn't what he needed to focus on now. "Rodney, would you -- oh, hell." This McKay didn't know the Atlantis systems like the back of his hand.

While McKay helped Weir crawl into a chair, John woke up a console and got it to display city schematics. He saw at once that the city was shielded. That meant they had a ZPM, so why hadn't they dialed Earth? He shook that mystery out of his head and zoomed in on the central tower.

"Where are they exactly?" he asked, following Weir's shaking finger as she pointed out the areas. "Okay. How many other Genii are here? Do you know where they're stationed? Who's second in command after Kolya? Did they have time to raise the alarm?" He snapped out the questions almost faster than she could answer them.

Mitchell came up to the command level to tie up the guards and 'Sergeant Darfman.' "Evening, Dr. Weir," he said as he rolled Kolya over to pull his arms back.

"Put extra restraints on that one," said John harshly, hand clenching over the 9mm on his thigh. "Did he hurt you?" he asked Weir abruptly.

He could see finger-shaped bruises coming up on her neck, but she shook her head. "Nothing to speak of. They need our cooperation to control the city systems, so we haven't been treated too harshly. At least the command staff haven't. It's been mostly just threats and a few . . . examples." She swallowed.

"Right. Mitchell, what's our situation?"

"We have eighteen captured and three dead hostiles -- one from friendly fire, two double-shot with zats. Hailey took a bullet in the leg; she can shoot, but she can't run. Lorne got clipped in the shoulder and hit his head on the way down. He's out with a concussion, but he isn't bleeding too bad."

John ran a hand through his hair. "Okay. Hailey, Jackson, and McKay will stay and hold the control room. You need to check over what the Genii have done here and make sure they didn't booby-trap anything. Mitchell and Cadman will go to the lower levels of this building -- Dr. Weir can tell you where -- and free the command personnel. I'll go after the other prisoners."

McKay stepped forward. "You shouldn't go alone. You need backup."

Mitchell nodded. "He's right. Daniel can --"

"Daniel and Hailey can handle the control room," McKay interrupted. "Hailey's almost as fast with computers as I am, and Dr. Weir will be helping them. I'll go with you."

"It's a long way, Rodney," John warned.

"I've been working out -- part of my PT after the, um, parasite thing. I can keep up."

"You need someone with you that at least a few of the prisoners will know," said Mitchell. "Otherwise they'll think it's a trick."

"Fine, okay!" John snapped. "Rodney's with me." He knew Jackson might be more suited for the job, but he'd feel better with McKay at his side.

Weir showed Mitchell the tower layout while Jackson helped Hailey up the steps. John eyed the bandage wrapped around her thigh just below the bottom of her flak jacket and shook his head. "You're too tall, Lieutenant. If you were a little shorter, that vest would protect you down to the knees."

"Very funny, sir," she gasped, limping toward a seat.

"Dr. Weir will show you how the systems work. Lock the doors behind us and don't let anyone in. If we don't pull this off . . ."

"We can go through the gate," Weir said confidently. "We have allies who will shelter us, even if they won't fight the Genii directly."

"Yeah, that might work." But John knew how widespread the Genii friends network was in Pegasus.

"Good luck, Colonel Sheppard, Colonel Mitchell. I have to thank you--"

"Thank us when we're done, ma'am," said Mitchell.

"Let's get moving," John said. "Ready, Rodney?"

McKay had gone wide-eyed and thin-lipped again. Probably he was regretting his insistence on coming.

John bumped shoulders with him and said, "Didn't I tell you it's beautiful? Wait 'til you see the transporters."

McKay's eyes flicked toward him nervously. "Are you going to kiss me again?" he murmured.

John winked. "Later," he promised, and nodded at Weir to unlock the doors.

* * *

"I'm guessing uninhabited," Sheppard said when they got their first look at the new planet.

"Maybe uninhabitable," said Rodney, laying a hand on the console so he could call up atmospheric sensor readings. The landscape stretching before them was rough and craggy, with a patchy greenish-gray carpet of something moss-like in the low-lying areas. The sun looked small and anemic in a sky of dark indigo. "Well, the atmosphere's only a little toxic, so a few minutes' exposure probably won't hurt us. There's oxygen, but the air's really too thin to breathe."

"Why do I feel like we're falling?" Sheppard kept twitching at the controls, raising and lowering the jumper in an odd cycle.

Rodney switched readouts. "Small planet, low gravity. The jumper has artificial gravity, of course, but it adapts to local conditions when possible. Hmm, a little under point three gees -- that's the lowest I've ever seen for a planet with a Stargate. Aside from space gates, of course."

"Oookay." Sheppard jerked the jumper up again, then lowered it more smoothly. "That's going to take some getting used to."

"Wait until you try walking in it."

The dart had crashed a few hundred meters beyond the gate after plowing a darker green furrow through the plant stuff. Rodney breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the rear section was intact. So was the pilot compartment, but there was no sign of movement there.

"Set us down over there," Rodney said. "No, not right next to the dart! A little ways behind it, just in case."

"In case what?" Sheppard asked, but he landed where Rodney indicated. "I thought you said we couldn't breathe the air, anyway."

Rodney stood, nearly hitting the ceiling, and headed for the storage compartments in the back of the jumper. "There's enough atmosphere that we don't need full pressure suits. Which is good, because we don't stock those in the jumpers. But somewhere around here -- ah, yes! -- we have some SCBA units for emergencies. Here."

He pulled off his computer pack and strapped the SCBA over his shoulders instead, checking the tank levels quickly. While Sheppard was figuring out his own breathing unit, Rodney closed the bulkhead door to preserve the atmosphere in the front of the jumper, then grabbed one of the remote control units and turned off the cloak. They were going to be visible anyway as they approached the dart; he just hoped the Wraith pilot was really unconscious.

He tossed a pair of goggles at Sheppard and pulled on some of his own. "Ready?" he asked. At Sheppard's nod, Rodney hit the hatch release. He worked his jaw to pop his ears, then slipped the regulator in his mouth.

The gray-green plants turned out to be spongy and crackly underfoot, and there was a faint haze hanging just above them. Rodney hoped it was water droplets and not vengeful mist-beings or worse, some allergenic pollen. He carefully didn't breathe through his nose, but the air stung his nostrils even so. He held his gun ready as they walked toward the rear of the dart. The crunch of their bounding footsteps sounded faint and far away in the thin air.

The dart's canopy was still closed and opaque, and Rodney didn't want to take the risk of opening it, so he just waved Sheppard to stand back while he holstered his gun and considered the problem. He didn't have enough air to sit down and write an interface program, or the right equipment to detach the rear section and carry it home, so he was just going to have to remove the data storage unit for the culling transporter and hope it could be reinstalled in one of the other cannibalized darts they had lying around Atlantis.

It was a good thing his combat knife was Ronon-approved, Rodney thought as he braced a knee on the back of the dart and began carving into its thick skin. Perhaps the Satedan would stop complaining about sharpening Rodney's knife when he learned it had been used to save him.

There were a couple of secondary power conduits in the way, and Rodney hissed as the hot, sinewy cables stung his hands. He should have brought gloves, but it was too late for that now, so he just pulled his sleeves down and tried to ignore the heat. At last he found the memory unit nestled like some vital organ, with power and data cables running in and out in multiple directions. He had to remove them in the correct order or the memory would be wiped.

As he sliced through the first cable, there was an angry _blaaat_ followed by a shrill whistle from further forward. Rodney cursed and cut another cable, yelping as it seared his fingertips. With flinching urgency, he reached for the next.

"McKay?" Sheppard's voice sounded muffled and distant. "Cockpit's opening."

Rodney spat out his regulator, gasping more from pain than lack of air. "Shoot the pilot!" he yelled as he dug under the unit for the next-to-last cable. "Every bullet you have! Don't let him reach the self-destruct!"

Shots rang out, but Rodney didn't look up from his work. He had a bad feeling the self-destruct would be triggered anyway, as soon as he severed this last cable. And sure enough, there was the familiar escalating whine.

"Run!" he bellowed at Sheppard as he struggled elbows-deep in the dart's slimy innards, trying to pull the data unit free. The damn power conduit was in the way again; he tore through it in one vicious motion. Sheppard grabbed his arm, helping him slide down from the dart, pushing him to hurry.

Running in low gravity quickly turned into an awkward swooping galumph. Rodney couldn't breathe or see properly. His hands burned, his lungs burned, the back of his neck burned as the dart lit up behind them.

The shockwave squeezed his ribs, lifted him off his feet, and tumbled him down onto the spongy ground with Sheppard falling child-light on top of him. Rodney caught a whiff of something foul and caustic, then clamped his mouth and eyes shut. His arms were wrapped around the memory unit, and he couldn't find his regulator just by twisting his head.

Then gentle hands were patting his face, feeding him the mouthpiece and straightening his goggles. He still couldn't see normally, and half the outer and inner surfaces of his body felt like they were on fire, but Sheppard helped him up and guided him back to the jumper and pressed him into a seat. His eardrums registered the return of normal air pressure, and after a minute his lungs and sinuses started to feel better too.

He opened stinging eyes to find Sheppard staring at him worriedly with goggles pushed up to disarrange his hair even more than usual. "Hey there. You okay?"

Rodney gulped back a near-sob, looking down at the ugly thing in his arms that he hoped held two of his teammates. "Not really, no."

"Well, um . . . before you pass out or whatever, can you tell me how to get this thing back to Atlantis?"

Rodney started to laugh and choked it off before it could turn into something hysterical. This Sheppard had never even seen a DHD before -- of course he was lost.

He stood shakily and stowed the Wraith data unit in a storage bin, then shucked the SCBA and goggles. His hands were red and blistered and tended to curl into defensive claws when he wasn't paying attention. "You'll have to fix the DHD first, since it shorted out," he said. With a task to focus on, his thoughts began to steady into familiar patterns. At least _this_ was a problem he could solve. "I'll show you what to do."

* * *

McKay was duly impressed by the transporters, but then he peppered John with questions as they detoured to lower-traffic routes. Did the transporters use the same de-molecularization technology as the gates, were the life-support systems still running with the city on the ocean surface, how much power was needed for the city to fly? This McKay might be in decent shape, but he couldn't keep talking while running up and down stairs. The running seemed to take second priority for him.

At least they hadn't run into any Genii yet. John paused in front of a door to let McKay catch his breath. "You didn't have this many questions when we arrived here in my universe," he grumbled.

McKay snorted. "Of course I did. I just didn't expect you to have answers."

"Look, we're going to be a little exposed on this next part here, so keep your head down. After that, we're in the building where the prisoners are and there should be about a dozen guards posted, so keep your _voice_ down. Got it?"

McKay nodded and made a lip-zipping motion, then raised his zat.

John waved a hand at the door sensor.

"Do you need the Ancient gene for that?" McKay asked, then winced. "Shutting up."

John sighed and led the way out onto the darkened pier, keeping an eye out for threats from above as well as ahead. McKay glanced up once as well and had to be jostled into motion again after he glimpsed the night sky framed by soaring towers.

They entered the obelisk building from the northwest side, which John guessed would be a less busy approach. Sure enough, it was unguarded. When they were in, McKay persuaded the door not to open from the outside, so they wouldn't have to worry about reinforcements arriving. He might not be as familiar with the Ancient systems as the other Rodney, but he was still pretty good; John was glad he'd come along.

The guards turned out to be on the stairs. John gave McKay a finger to the lips and a stay-here motion, before creeping up as high as he could below them without being seen. Then he whipped around the corner and fired twice through the railing. Both guards dropped.

"These zat things aren't bad," John mused as he stripped the guards of their weapons (Earth issue) and their radios (Genii issue). "Could use more range, but they're quieter than Wraith stunners."

Thanks to the quiet weapons, he took out another pair of guards in the southeast stairwell -- after McKay sabotaged that door too -- without raising an alarm. But one of the third pair got off a shot at him, and after that came a frantic period of running and tracking people by radio and climbing into weird ambush positions. John wished he'd found time to get a life-signs detector out of one of the jumpers. The Genii net tightened around them until he ended up using McKay as a decoy -- unintentionally, but effectively.

"I can't believe you did that!" McKay hissed at him. He was the only person John knew whose voice could crack on a whisper. "I got _shot_!" He fingered the tear in his flak vest anxiously.

"I didn't plan it that way, Rodney. It just happened." John stuffed more guns and radios in the pockets of his own vest.

"Hello! Shot? In the chest?!"

"Better than the head. Shhh," John said, listening to a Genii radio. He grinned. "Sounds like the command staff are on the loose."

Then there was only the last pair of guards on the level with the cells, and finally they were liberating prisoners, four and five from each cell. Since the locks had been programmed _not_ to respond to the ATA gene, McKay had to jimmy the first two sets of controls. After that, there were enough science personnel free to do it themselves, and things went faster.

John was stunned and delighted to find Ford in the third cell, as baby-faced and brown-eyed as ever. Ford was suspicious at first, until McKay insisted that John had come with him from the SGC; then he accepted a confiscated gun and told John where to find Bates and Markham.

He spotted a few Athosians in the mix, so he wasn't completely surprised when Teyla showed up in the sixth cell. John caught her arms unthinkingly as she came out and started to bend his forehead to hers, but she put him in a headlock.

"Uh, hi, Teyla," he gasped into a familiar-smelling elbow. "Nice to see you too."

She released him and stepped back. "You know my name."

John rubbed his neck. "Long story. Didn't mean to startle you."

She sighed. "I apologize for my reaction. We . . . have not been treated well."

Inside the cell, Miko Kusanagi was weeping in Kate Heightmeyer's arms, both of them very far from their usual well-groomed selves. Dr. Simpson and a woman John didn't recognize stared at him with angry, haunted eyes.

"I knew I should have killed that bastard Kolya," John growled, and gave Teyla his P-90.

She tilted her head. "Kolya was not the one most responsible." There was a dark bruise on her jaw, although she moved as lithely as ever.

"He was in command. He had to know about it." He couldn't tell her about what Kolya had done in his universe that made him so sure the commander would sanction rape and torture while standing back to keep his hands clean.

As he headed for the next cell room down the corridor, a voice came over the city-wide intercom system. "Invaders from Earth!"

"Who's he calling an invader?" Ford muttered.

"I have access to control and weapons systems. You will let my people go, or the city -- and Dr. Beckett -- will suffer the consequences."

"Who _is_ that?" John asked, sure he knew the voice but unable to place it.

"Tyrus," Ford sneered. "Kolya's second in command."

John frowned. "What control systems is he talking about?"

Mitchell's voice sounded over the SGC radio on John's shoulder. "Daniel, what's going on?"

"We're fine here," Jackson responded at once. "Dr. Weir says there's an auxiliary control room."

"Aw, hell!" said John. "That's where the weapons chair is. If he puts Beckett in that chair, anything could happen."

"But that doesn't make sense," McKay said. "Auxiliary control shouldn't have access unless primary control hands it over or goes off-line."

"Get back to the control room," John told him. "Take anyone who knows the Atlantis systems -- Grodin, if you can find him. See if you can stop Tyrus from tapping in. Cut off all his power, if you have to."

McKay nodded and started off.

"Ford, take someone and go with McKay." Most of the Genii were captive by now, but any still free would be both smart and sneaky.

"Right. Markham --"

"Wait, not him. I may need him," said John. Markham was the shortest Marine in sight. John would have preferred a small woman, but Hailey was wounded and too far away, Teyla had disappeared, and the others in that cell weren't combat trained. Maybe Markham would be small enough.

As Ford got someone else to escort McKay, John headed for the stairs. He stopped cold when he found Teyla crouching over one of the Genii guards -- apparently just returned to consciousness -- with her hand down his pants. Several Marines stood around looking unhappy.

"Tell me where she is," Teyla hissed at the man, her arm twisting sharply.

He screamed, high-pitched and agonized.

"Teyla?" John said, baffled and concerned.

"Do you wish me to remove it entirely?" Teyla asked. "I could ensure that you will never hurt another woman again."

"No! No! Don't, I'll -- she's -- she's quartered on level fifteen near the base of the control tower, west side. But I don't know if she's there right now -- aaah!"

With one last vicious jerk, Teyla pulled her hand free -- fingertips bloody -- and stood up. Then she kicked him hard in the crotch. He screamed again and curled into a ball.

"Whoa, Teyla, what the hell was that?" John demanded. His groin was shriveling away from its usual combat-ready state.

Her eyes were harder than he had ever seen them, like Ronon's eyes when he faced a Wraith. "Perhaps you do not know me as well as you think," she said. "I must go." She hoisted the P-90 and ran down the stairs.

"Teyla, wait! Markham, come on." John ran after her, but by the time they reached the pier level she had already disappeared, and there was no time to look for her. John cursed and headed for the chair room.

On the way, they listened to Tyrus's escalating demands and Weir trying futilely to negotiate with him. The man was getting desperate, insisting that all the command staff and everyone who had arrived from the SGC should surrender to him. He wasn't going to get what he wanted, but he might cause a lot of damage before they could stop him. Even if they locked him out of the system, he still had Beckett as a hostage.

As they got close, John explained his plan to Markham. There was one way to get into auxiliary control that the person inside couldn't close off: the tubes that led from the drone bay to the chair room. With the drones nearly used up, access was easy. Sort of.

"I don't think I'll fit in one of those tubes, sir," Markham whispered as they approached the vast bay beneath the chair room.

"I know, dammit, but we have to try!"

"And even if I get in, what happens if he fires a drone?"

"I promise you, Beckett really doesn't want to do that. The chair probably won't even respond to him." At least John hoped so.

His nerves tingled as they reached the last corner; someone was there ahead of them. John went low and led with his zat.

A man was boosting someone in black fatigues -- Cadman? -- into one of the launch tubes. He heard them coming and whirled to point a Wraith stunner at John, leaving Cadman to dangle.

"He's with us, sir," said Markham quickly. It was unclear which of them he was speaking to.

John straightened and disarmed the zat. "I'm Colonel Sheppard," he said shortly. "You must be Captain O'Neill."

"That's right." The face under the light brown brush cut was youthful, but surely older than twenty. As he got closer, John saw that one of his eyes was pure black.

"Shit," he breathed. That explained the extra years. "Tell me you're not hopped up on that damn enzyme."

O'Neill eyed him suspiciously. "No. I'd rather go through morphine withdrawal ten times over than do that again."

"Hello, could I have a hand here?" came Cadman's muffled voice as her legs kicked.

They helped her squeeze in, but it was clear she wasn't going to make it. She wormed as far as the first bend, and then they had to pull her out.

"Sorry, sir," she said, hair plastered to her red face.

"We'll think of something else," said O'Neill.

"Like what?" John asked. "Tyrus is half nuts. He isn't going to wait much longer before he tries something."

Then a new voice sounded on the Genii radio strapped to Sheppard's wrist: "Father?"

"Sora? Where are you?"

"I, I am -- _unh_! Teyla Emmagan is with me."

"Emmagan! You would not dare to harm her. We have been friends for years. Your honor will not permit --"

"Honor?" Teyla's voice was low and furious. "Where was honor when you let those monsters in our cell? Where was friendship when you turned your eyes aside?"

"Father, she has a knife!" Sora sounded frightened, vulnerable, not like the bitter, hardened beauty who had lost her father in John's universe.

"You would not!" Tyrus roared.

"No? If you think I have any restraint or compassion remaining, think again! That was all burned away as I watched your men torture my friends."

"I have a hostage too! Shall I shoot Dr. Beckett and let you hear his screams?"

John shifted uncomfortably as they heard a Scots burr in the background, words running together in alarm.

There was a long pause, then Teyla continued, her voice calmer but still cold enough to burn. "It comes to this, Tyrus. One of us wants vengeance more dearly than the safety of the hostage. Dr. Beckett is my friend, but so were the women who shared my cell these past weeks. And you, Tyrus? Which do you care for most: revenge on the Lanteans, or your daughter's skin and innocence preserved?"

This time the silence seemed to stretch forever. Then, "Don't hurt her," Tyrus pleaded, almost sobbing. "I'll do anything, I'll surrender, just don't hurt my daughter!"

John met O'Neill's stunned gaze for a moment, then they both raced for the stairs to the chair room.

After a minute, Beckett came over the radio. "Tyrus has untied me and handed me a gun. Teyla . . . don't hurt the lass!"

"She is unharmed," Teyla said shortly.

As soon as the door opened, O'Neill stunned Tyrus. John checked the room quickly for further threats or booby-traps, then slumped against a console. It was over.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ancients were crazy, and McKay can't tell his Sheppards apart.

Rodney was not enjoying his stay in the infirmary -- not that he ever did, with Carson's sandpapery bedside manner. But this time was worse. His hands were slathered in ointment, wrapped in light dressings, and then tied to the bed to keep him from handling anything. He couldn't use a computer, couldn't go to the bathroom without assistance, couldn't even rub his furiously itching eyes. And Carson, after listening to his lungs, had said he'd have to stay here at least overnight for monitoring. He was miserable and bored and lonely. Also worried about his teammates; he hadn't heard anything since Radek carried off the memory unit with muttered imprecations in Czech.

Rodney sighed and twisted his head to rub one eye, then the other against his pillow.

"Hey, McKay."

Rodney gaped at the watery, blurred images of Ronon and Teyla. "What are you doing here?"

"Came to get checked out by the doc," Ronon rumbled, sounding unfairly amused. "Make sure we didn't get our parts mixed up."

"Dr. Zelenka released us from the Wraith transporter," Teyla said.

"Well, he could have told me!"

"We promised him we would come speak to you right away."

Rodney blinked furiously as his eyes stung even worse than before. After a moment a soft brown hand brought a tissue to dab at his cheeks.

"Thank you," he choked around a lump in his throat. Had there been lemon in that dinner the nurse gave him? "There are some, uh, eyedrops over there, if you wouldn't mind."

Teyla tended him gently and without embarrassment. "Co-- Mr. Sheppard told us of your bravery, and how you were injured while rescuing us. Ronon and I both owe you a great debt."

Rodney sniffed. "Well, that's nothing new."

"Sorry if we worried you," said Ronon, sounding not nearly as repentant as he should be.

Rodney stiffened. "Worried? Oh no, I wasn't worried -- more like appalled. Infuriated, maybe. And outraged, yes, definitely outraged. Has anyone pointed out what an incredibly _brainless_ stunt that was, Ronon? You too, Teyla! You'd think two people who grew up in this galaxy would know better than to run directly into a Wraith culling beam! I mean, what were you thinking? No, forget that, you obviously weren't thinking at all. Don't worry that the transporter scrambled your neurons or anything, because it couldn't possibly make you any more stupid!"

"We were fortunate you were there to save us from the consequences of our foolishness," Teyla said smoothly, without a trace of irony in her voice. Rodney couldn't focus well enough to see if she was smirking at him.

"Hmmph. I really don't know how either of you survived to adulthood. And also? You owe me a new knife. I lost mine inside the guts of an exploding dart!"

Something large and shiny appeared before his face. "This one good enough for you?"

Rodney rolled his eyes. "One that fits in my boot sheath will be fine. It's not like I have anything to compensate for."

"I know. Seen you in the showers."

Teyla laughed out loud.

"You -- what -- you've been --"

Just then, Carson called out, "Teyla, Ronon, I'm ready for you now."

"Later, McKay," said Ronon. Teyla's breath was still unsteady with suppressed laughter as she said goodnight and followed him off, and then Rodney was left to sputter to himself.

* * *

The explanations lasted forever. Worn out from arguing at the SGC -- not to mention all the fighting and running, more fighting and more running, and then the post-adrenaline letdown -- John slumped in a conference room chair and let McKay tell most of their side of the story. He only took in the broad details of this other Atlantis expedition.

Their first days in the Pegasus galaxy had been much like his, except that Sumner survived for nearly a year as a withered old man, and gave O'Neill a field promotion so that he could act as military commander. The extragalactic dialing crystal had gotten damaged on the planet of the mist aliens (McKay groaned), so even when they got the ZPM from the Quindosim they still couldn't dial Earth. Zelenka had been lost to the nanovirus.

The Daedalus had arrived unwarned in the middle of a Wraith siege and taken a terrible pounding. O'Neill had left the shielded city to rescue the few survivors by gateship, and got a Wraith handprint on his chest and a trip through enzyme withdrawal for his troubles. Caldwell had a spinal injury and was wheelchair bound; Daedalus was an airless hulk drifting in orbit. And so on. They had fooled the Wraith into thinking the city was destroyed, and after that they kept a pretty low profile. They'd missed many of the more recent scrapes John's expedition had run into, simply because they didn't have the manpower or resources to go so far afield.

McKay started quizzing Grodin about the exact state of the dialing crystal. John told them about the intergalactic bridge of stargates his Rodney was working on; they could do the same thing, but they'd have to wait for the Odyssey to arrive to help them harvest gates. Then McKay and Grodin began arguing over whether the Daedalus could be salvaged. John sighed and dropped his forehead to his crossed arms.

"Colonel Sheppard?"

He jumped. "Huh?" Everyone was looking at him. "Oh . . . sorry."

Weir smiled understandingly. "Don't be. We're all exhausted. Why don't we break for the night? We can resume this discussion in the morning."

"I have to get back to --"

"Peter will check the database and make sure the planet you told us about is still here in this universe. If everything looks all right, Captain O'Neill can take you there tomorrow."

"Yeah, okay, that sounds good." John rubbed a hand over his face and winced as he touched the splinter-gash on his cheek, which had taken two stitches.

Thanks to the expedition's shortage of supplies -- not to mention the disruption from the Genii invasion -- the quarters Bates directed him to were small and sparsely furnished. But there was a bathroom and a bed, and that was all that mattered.

He woke to an unexpected weight pressing down the mattress. "Hngwha?"

"It's just me." The weight shifted around, tugging blankets and adjusting pillows.

"Rodney? What are you doing here?"

The weight stilled. "Well, I thought that was obvious, but if you have to ask . . ."

"No, I mean --" John flopped onto his back with a groan, trying to persuade his eyelids there were no hydraulics holding them shut.

"We didn't get to spend much time together at the SGC while I was working on that power source and packing up my apartment in my free time. And tomorrow you'll be -- well, we hope you will, anyway -- so I thought . . ."

"S'okay," said John, flopping one hand around until it found a fistful of McKay to pull closer. "C'mere."

McKay was wearing a t-shirt and boxers, since he had actually packed to come here. John had just peeled off his fatigues (all he had to wear, which didn't actually belong to him _or_ this reality's John Sheppard) and crawled into bed.

"You're tired. Maybe I should --"

"I'm fine, just give me a moment." John rubbed a hand soothingly over McKay's back. "What time is it?"

"Past two."

"Atlantis time, really? That's pretty late." John had found it was a lot easier to get to bed before midnight when midnight was four hours later, but apparently that wasn't good enough for McKay.

McKay shifted until his head was nestled more comfortably in the hollow of John's shoulder. "Grodin was showing me some of what they've done here. It's amazing! There are still whole sections of the city they haven't explored yet, did you know that? And they've barely begun to catalog the Ancient database --"

"Glad you're enjoying yourself," John said with a grin. "I knew you'd like Atlantis."

"I can hardly believe I'm finally here, for real. I've dreamed about coming here since, well, forever, it seems. Oh, and Beckett has a therapy to give people an artificial version of the ATA gene, so I can actually interface with the Ancient technology! It only works in forty-seven percent of cases, though . . ."

"It'll work on you," John promised.

"Really?" McKay's voice was unmistakably smug. "It didn't work for Peter Grodin."

"You going to take over as chief scientist?"

"Actually, Peter did suggest that. I think he just wants to foist off the paperwork onto someone else. But Elizabeth said we should wait to discuss it until I get settled in."

"Doesn't matter, really. You'll make your mark no matter who does the paperwork."

McKay snuffled a short laugh into his neck, then sobered. "It's dangerous here, though. Even though it's comparatively underpopulated, this galaxy actually might be more dangerous than the Milky Way. You realize they've lost almost 40% of their people? That includes scientists as well as military."

"That just means they really need you. We've lost 20% in two years, which is bad enough. But a lot of the ones still alive owe it to Rodney."

There was a long silence, then McKay said, "You, uh, you really love him, don't you?"

"Huh?"

"Your Rodney McKay."

John hesitated. "Actually . . . we aren't a couple. Never so much as kissed. You kinda jumped to the wrong conclusion there."

"Oh. I did wonder. You seemed -- well, surprised by some things you should have known."

"The laughing?"

McKay squirmed a little. "No, not that. Really, I only do that -- very rarely. Only once or twice, when the, um, the sex was really, you know . . . exceptional."

John smirked into the darkness. "Why thank you, Dr. McKay!"

McKay slapped his chest. "Now you're just trying to distract me. But it won't work; I'm relentless. So do you love him?"

John had never really thought about it. "I . . . I miss him. I miss all of them. Having you here, being in Atlantis again -- it helps, but it isn't the same." The people were nearly the same, but they weren't _his_ people, and he wasn't one of theirs.

"I'll send you back. If this device tomorrow doesn't do it, I'll find another way."

"I know you will, Rodney. I trust you." John realized that was true, and it didn't start with this Rodney. The faith that had been shaken by Doranda had grown strong again when he wasn't looking.

"And when you get back, you'll tell him how you feel, won't you? Leaving aside the fact that you still haven't told _me_ straight out. You will tell him?"

John sighed. "I really don't know if I can do that. It might mess up the team, or our friendship, or even the whole command structure of Atlantis. I'm not sure I want to take that chance."

"Just tell him. Look, it might not come to anything -- it doesn't have to. But he should get a say in that decision, too."

"I'll . . . think about it."

The hand that had been absently stroking his shoulder started to move more deliberately across his chest, teasing a nipple experimentally. "Huh. I suppose I should remind you just what you have to gain if it does work out."

"Rodney," he groaned.

"What?" McKay tried to sound innocent.

John rolled suddenly, pinning McKay under his weight. "If you're going to start something like that, you should really be naked first. What, you think that's funny? Or you're just getting a head start on the laughter?"

McKay giggled again. "That depends. Is this going to be exceptional sex?"

"Oh, I'd say so." John investigated the soft skin below McKay's ear. "I'd say very definitely exceptional sex."

* * *

Between the regular application of eyedrops and the dimmer lighting at night, Rodney's vision was improved by the time Sheppard came to visit him. He saw the grim expression and knew exactly what it meant.

"Weir spoke to you?"

Sheppard gave a short nod. "She said you can't get me back where I belong. You're sure about that?"

Rodney sighed. "From what I could tell, I think that outpost was somehow deliberately sabotaged even before the looters came through. The device wasn't designed to do what it did to you, and it definitely wasn't designed to reverse it. There is no memory buffer, so we just don't have enough information to identify the exact universe you came from. It's possible we _might_ be able to replicate most of the conditions if we could find another quantum mirror with an intact control unit, but I've never seen any mentioned in the SGC reports. And if they did find one, after their previous experience they would probably --"

"Enough, McKay. I get the idea." Sheppard glanced around the quiet infirmary alcove, looking uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry," Rodney said miserably. "I'm sure you want to get back to your own life. But really, Atlantis isn't so bad once you get used to it."

Sheppard grimaced. "Atlantis is fantastic. But Weir said I'd probably have to go back to Earth."

"What? That's ridiculous!"

"I'm not your Colonel Sheppard, Rodney."

"I know that! Obviously, I know that. But we need your gene. You're already as good as our best pilots after just one jumper flight, and with experience you can be as good as Colonel --"

"I can't take over his life, Rodney. I can't take over his command. And I can't be here if the new commander and every marine and airman is going to be looking at me and wondering 'what would Sheppard do?' in a crisis situation."

"They don't have to! You could still . . . well . . . there must be -- I'll talk to Weir," Rodney said finally.

"Don't bother. She's right. But she did say I wouldn't have to leave right away." Sheppard eyed Rodney solemnly, as if trying to decide something. Then he sighed and said, "Look. I, uh, I wasn't exactly happy with the way my life was going, before I came here, but it wasn't anything bad. I swear to you, I wasn't in jail. Your colonel will be fine."

Rodney's face heated. "I know. I did figure that out. I just -- I couldn't --"

"All right. As long as you don't think I'm some kind of usurper or something."

"No no, of course not. There was no way you could have planned what happened. Or even known about it."

"Yeah, but you won't be the only one to think I might be taking advantage of the situation. That's another reason why I have to go."

"I wasn't thinking that! Okay, maybe for a moment there, but I -- I had some other issues confusing me at the time."

Sheppard's mouth quirked. "No kidding."

"I don't want you to leave here thinking that I . . ." Rodney tugged at the gauze holding his wrists down. He couldn't _talk_ without his hands! "It wasn't you. It wasn't the sex -- that was great. Well, pretty good, anyway."

"Only pretty good?" Sheppard gave an exaggerated pout.

"That was my first time doing, you know, some of that stuff. I expect it'll get better with practice."

Sheppard frowned. "That what you want, Rodney? To try again?"

Rodney tugged again at the restraints, wishing he could gesture to draw attention away from the heat in his face. "Yes, I . . . I think so."

"You need to do a little better than 'think so' before you try again, Rodney. Because from where I'm standing, that sexual identity freak-out you had the other day --"

"That wasn't about sexual identity! At least, not my sexual identity. I may not have been with a man before, but I'm open-minded enough to take the opportunity when it comes up. But . . ."

Sheppard rolled his eyes. "Colonel Sheppard," he said in long-suffering tones, as if talking about an eccentric relative who needed to be bailed out of jail again.

"Despite what you say, I've really never had any reason to think he was anything except completely straight."

"Look, you asked me all those questions and compared them with my -- your colonel's -- file, and you decided that my universe diverged from yours just three years ago. Right?"

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"What? Yes, of course I'm sure."

"Well, then, I'm sure Colonel Sheppard is bisexual. Really very sure."

"Oh."

"He's just good at hiding it. You have to be, in that line of work."

"Right, that makes sense."

"And I'm also sure he's attracted to you. Maybe he thought you wouldn't be interested, maybe he figured it wasn't worth the risk, but I guarantee he's thought about it."

Rodney shook his head. "No, see, that part I just can't buy."

Sheppard groaned. "Jesus, Rodney! You're so sure of yourself when it comes to scientific theory or any kind of technology --"

"With good reason!"

"-- and then you have absolutely no confidence when it comes to your own sexual appeal."

Rodney grimaced. "Again, good reason."

"Just, try to stop doubting yourself, okay? Maybe I'm not your colonel, but I'm a healthy human being with eyes, and I'm saying you're sexy!"

Rodney boggled for a moment, then tried a smile. After all, it was a compliment. "Right. Well . . . thank you."

"So if you really want to get some more practice -- if you can get past 'think so' to 'pretty sure' -- well then, you know where to find me."

Rodney blinked. "For a little while, anyway. I -- I won't be able to do much in the way of reciprocation, though. I can't even undo my own fly right now."

Sheppard's eyebrows went up suggestively. "Sounds like you could use someone to help you out, then. Look, why don't I stop by your quarters after you get out of here. I can give you a hand with -- well, anything that needs hands, and anything else . . . we can talk about."

Rodney's smile came more easily this time. "That would be good. We can talk about it. I'd like that."

"Okay, it's a date. Or -- whatever." Sheppard patted his knee. "And now I better get out of here before the nurse decides I'm disturbing your rest. Night, Rodney."

"Good night . . . John." Rodney let his head fall back against the pillow with a wistful smile.

* * *

They gated to the Ancient outpost the next evening, since its day was nearly in phase with the Atlantis night. O'Neill flew the 'gateship,' accompanied by Grodin and Teyla -- who were regular members of his team -- along with Jackson, who was evidently curious to see the place and got to sit in the co-pilot seat. This left John and McKay the seats in the rear of the jumper. John always hated to be a passenger, but it was actually harder on McKay, who was wildly curious about the operation of the ship (though he hadn't accepted John's solemn assurance that they were really called 'puddlejumpers'). John ended up standing in the cockpit half the time anyway, pointing O'Neill in the right direction.

The dunes must have drifted differently in this universe, because only the top of the outpost was showing. Grodin and McKay argued in partial sentences for a bit -- John was glad to see that the Englishman gave as good as he got in the interruptions department -- and came up with a cunning plan to alter the jumper's drive pods to blast away sand. This required some fancy maneuvering at first, which made John's fingers itch for the control sticks. Then they hovered in place for a while letting the sand blow away until the entrance was accessible.

John and O'Neill between them persuaded the door to open. Inside, they found the outpost whole and untouched.

"Whoa," said John.

"What is it?" Grodin asked. McKay and Jackson were already engrossed in the equipment.

"This was all vandalized in my world. Completely gutted."

McKay spared him a glance at that. "That might explain something. From what I'm seeing, I don't think this was intended to -- hmmm." Then he was lost in a display of Ancient text Jackson had conjured up.

John opened the inner room so they could check out the device, but all three of them seemed happy checking out the controls and information in the outer room.

Once they had confirmed the place had no obvious threats or booby-traps, O'Neill gave a shrug. "Looks like they'll be at it for a while. Let's get some fresh air."

The two of them scrambled up the steep sand ramp to loiter in the shade of the jumper. Teyla gave them only a curt nod as she prowled around the exterior of the outpost like an angry tiger. It bothered John to see her so shadowed. He knew she was working through it -- talking frequently with the other women who had been through the same ordeal -- and he knew he was a stranger to her and could do nothing to help, but it still worried him. He was ready to get back to his own universe and leave the dilemmas of this one behind.

"Who's the fourth on your team?" he asked O'Neill by way of small talk.

"It was Ford, but he's ready to lead a team of his own by now."

John made a non-committal noise. The plans Ford had come up with in his universe were too damn reckless, but that might have been the enzyme affecting his judgment. Regardless of his strategies, he'd certainly inspired loyalty in his ragged band. Maybe leadership would be good for him.

"I was thinking of Markham to replace him, but . . ." O'Neill shrugged. "I'm not sure Teyla would trust a new guy on the team just now. What about those women who came with you? They any good?"

John considered. "Hailey's gung-ho, but she's really a science whiz at heart. It'd be a waste to team her with Grodin. Put her on a team that needs a scientist with combat skills." John was always scrambling to find enough scientists suited for offworld missions. There were plenty of capable candidates, but most wanted to stay in their peaceful labs and run experiments. Hailey, however, obviously had a strong sense of adventure. He wondered if her counterpart in his universe would be eligible for the Atlantis project.

"And Cadman?"

"She might be what you're looking for. Tough, level-headed in a crisis -- and she's a demolitions specialist, so she'd be good to replace Ford. You have to keep on her about the hairstyle regs, though."

O'Neill flicked his eyes skeptically up at John's head.

"Hey, this body isn't in the Air Force," he pointed out. "My real hair is shorter." By at least a millimeter or two, he didn't add.

"I still wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on, the way Teyla wears her hair."

"Yeah. My team . . . well, the only one whose hair is regulation is the scientist." One Marine had joked that Ronon was only on the team to make John's hair look respectable. Ronon had held the guy down and shaved his head, and after that no one else commented.

"Maybe I'll give Cadman a try," O'Neill said.

"Put McKay on an offworld team too. No, I'm serious, he's brilliant."

"I know that, I'm just not sure I want him holding a gun when he has a panic attack."

John grimaced and rubbed his arm where a new pink scar should have been. "You might feel differently after he's pulled your asses out of the fire a few times. I told your Weir about a planet that has an Ancient ship on it -- or had, anyway. In my world it got blown up by a volcano. But if the sand dunes moved differently here, maybe that volcano hasn't gone off yet. If it's still there, you need to get McKay on it."

"All right, I'll think about it." O'Neill cocked his head. "What about you? Your double, I mean?"

John shrugged. "Don't know if he'd be interested. He's only been out of the service a few years so he shouldn't be too rusty -- but if he was discharged for what I think he was, you can forget about getting him reinstated."

"Weir might take him on as a civilian. We need more people, especially with the strong version of the gene."

John considered a moment, then thumped the side of the jumper and revealed, "If you want him to stay, just let him fly one of these babies once. He'll be hooked."

O'Neill's mouth twitched. "Useful advice." Then he raised a hand to his ear. "On our way." He turned to John. "Peter says they need us for something."

"Where have you been?" McKay demanded irritably as they slid through the doorway with sand in their boots. "There's a panel in that wall over there that will only respond to the gene. Open it."

O'Neill just gave the scientist a pained look.

"Way to make nice with your new co-workers, Rodney," said John as he started patting the wall.

"Please!" Rodney huffed. "If they're as touchy as the last bunch I worked with, we might as well get it all out in the open now."

Fortunately, Grodin looked more amused than annoyed. Jackson seemed oblivious to the by-play. Then a panel slid back in the wall, and McKay and Grodin were elbowing each other aside to get at it. John stepped safely out of the way.

"What did they figure out so far, Daniel?" O'Neill asked.

Jackson waved at the console with the scrolling Ancient text on it. "Evidently this installation wasn't designed to make people switch universes at all. It was actually for observing different universes. You were supposed to see the other reality through your double's eyes for however long you had your head in the device. They wanted to check out other universes to search for a solution to the Wraith problem."

"So how did it get messed up?" John asked. "Somebody who didn't know what they were doing?"

"No, that's the interesting part; it had to be deliberate. Apparently there was an Ancient who got stranded here -- well, this place in your universe -- when Atlantis was abandoned. He altered the device in your reality so that he could switch with his double in this universe who made it back safely."

O'Neill winced. "So the other guy, his double, just pops from Atlantis --"

"Probably Earth by that time."

"Right. Then he just shows up in this place in the middle of the desert, all of a sudden?" O'Neill gave an exaggerated shudder. "That's creepy."

"Well, it wasn't a desert then . . ."

"It's still the middle of nowhere," John pointed out. "And Atlantis was empty, with the Stargate blocked against dial-in from anywhere but Earth. And the Wraith were probably really pissed." He shook his head. "That is pretty nasty."

"It gets worse," said Jackson. "We think this Ancient must have set it up so the transfer from your universe to this one would burn out some of the circuits on that end."

"Oh, good," John sighed in relief.

They both stared at him. "You think that's _good_?" O'Neill demanded.

"I was worried the reason my McKay couldn't get me back was because something went wrong, back in my universe. I mean, I was holding a gun at the time of the switch -- what if my double freaked out and shot him or something? But if the device was broken, that explains it."

Jackson nodded. "But the burned-out circuits caused the same problem for the Ancient who used it -- or rather, for his double. Even though he had all the same knowledge, he wouldn't be able to get the device to return him to his original reality, unless he could bring replacement parts from somewhere else."

"Probably got himself killed trying it," O'Neill mused.

Jackson nodded. "That could be connected to how the outpost got vandalized in the other universe but remained sealed in this one."

O'Neill shook his head. "So the evil twin basically got away with murder, huh?"

"And messing with the order of the universe, not to mention my life," John muttered.

"Oh no, he didn't get away with it," Jackson replied absently.

"He didn't?" asked O'Neill.

"Who do you think sent the information about what he'd done to this database, in this universe? He was caught."

McKay turned to them from the crystal bank. "But we knew that anyway. When did the timelines for the two universes diverge?"

"What is this, a pop quiz?" John objected. "I thought you decided it was three years ago."

"Exactly. _Not_ ten thousand years ago. So that means the Ancient who transferred to Earth had no impact on its history. None. He died there shortly after the transfer -- maybe even sooner than his double who switched to your universe."

John sighed. "Fine. Bad guy paid the price, history was unchanged, wonderful. But he still messed up my life. Can you fix it? Can the swap be reversed from this end?"

McKay nodded. "Yes, I think so."

Grodin shook his head. "I'm not so sure."

"Yes!" McKay repeated. "Look, it's all in the database there. If we swap these circuits around --"

"But you would have to flip _and_ reverse the control crystal. It isn't meant to go that way!"

"So it will probably burn out on the first use. That doesn't matter, as long as it works the first time."

"What if it doesn't work? What if we send him to the wrong universe?"

"Uh," said John uneasily.

"That's not going to happen. The chances are no more than three percent. Maybe five."

"Rodney . . . "

"No, look. After the bad guy was caught, this outpost was set to observe the universe he had come from. They would have sent him back if he hadn't died first. That was the last thing that was recorded before this place was abandoned -- and it's clearly been untouched for thousands of years, which means the connection should still be set for the last universe contacted."

"You're saying the universe I swapped with wasn't chosen because I was thinking about surfing?"

"No, that was just a coincidence."

"Some coincidence!" John objected.

"Not really," said Grodin. "You were thinking of something you enjoy doing, and your double was doing something he enjoyed doing."

John glanced at O'Neill, who looked equally skeptical.

"Think about it," said McKay. "How many other things that you enjoy did you mention or think of in, say, the hour before you got switched? If you had ended up eating your favorite food or listening to your favorite music, you might have thought that was too much for coincidence too."

"But when you consider that it might have been any one of those things, the odds aren't so long," Grodin pointed out.

"Okay . . ." John said doubtfully. "You think the choice of universe to switch with is fixed."

McKay nodded. "Or at least unchanged from the last time this facility was used."

"So as long as it hasn't been touched in ten thousand years, I'll go home." John frowned.

"Exactly."

"Okay. What do I need to do?"

"Just wait a few minutes while I swap these circuits, then stick your head in the device again."

John turned and looked around at the others. "Well. I guess should, uh . . ." He pulled himself up. "Dr. Jackson. Thanks for your help, and please pass that on to the others from the SGC. Captain O'Neill . . ." He shook his head, still bemused by the rank. "Good luck. Take care of your team -- and listen to McKay," he added in a whisper.

O'Neill shrugged lightly. "Thanks for, you know, breaking us out of jail and all that. And shooting Kolya."

"Oh, that part was my pleasure," John assured him. "Dr. Grodin?" He shook the Englishman's hand hard, trying to think of something to say. "Be careful." He looked away as a light of suspicion appeared in Grodin's eyes.

O'Neill had been muttering into his radio, and now Teyla came sliding down the sand ramp. She paused in the doorway, looking uncomfortable. John wondered if she was going to develop a fear of confined spaces, but she walked into the outpost with her head high.

He rested his fingertips on her arms, not grabbing, and bent his forehead to hers. "Take care of yourself," he murmured.

"And you also," she said solemnly. "Good fortune wherever you go."

It was one of the more intimate Athosian farewells, and John was touched. He swallowed hard.

McKay got to his feet and brushed off his pants legs. "Okay, it's ready." He pointed at O'Neill. "You. Don't even think of coming in that room." Instead, he followed John into the small chamber himself, and the door closed behind them.

John blinked. Had he done that?

"I wanted to say goodbye alone," said McKay, an unhappy groove appearing between his eyebrows.

"Hey." John squeezed his arm. "You'll be fine. In fact, you'll be great. You're going to love it here, and the people will love you too once you save their lives a few times. Though it might happen sooner if you could keep from snapping their heads off all the time."

McKay rolled his eyes. "Do you really think that's going to happen?"

"Well, it's not likely. But you could still try." He pulled McKay into a hug. "Rodney. Thank you. For everything. You believed me, you helped me, you --"

McKay shook his head. "No, you believed in me. And you got me to Atlantis."

John smiled. "You inspired me." And he kissed him. Even dry-eyed, McKay tasted like tears. "Take care."

"You too."

John stepped back. "Maybe . . . you know, the other guy might be interested. I hear he's as good-looking as I am."

McKay snorted. "Same to you, Colonel. _Tell_ my double how you feel. It could all work out."

"Okay. I'll, uh, I'll consider it." John looked at the framed thing on the wall.

"You just have to step close to it, and it will activate," said McKay nervously.

"I know." John grabbed McKay and kissed him one more time, then walked straight up to the device and shoved his face at it. The frame grabbed his head and a bright light flashed. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes he was in Atlantis.

* * *

Dressed in loose sweatpants and a t-shirt, Rodney opened the door to his quarters. "Oh. Sheppard."

John grinned broadly. "Hey there!"

Rodney shook his head quickly. "Don't, uh -- don't say anything yet, okay? Um. You'd better come in."

Inside, Rodney paced back and forth, his gauze-wrapped hands moving in nervous aborted gestures.

John frowned. "Rodney, what happened to --"

"No, please, just -- just let me speak first." Rodney came to a stop and took a deep breath. "I know I said we would talk about it, but I've been thinking, and . . . I really don't think I can. It's not you, it's nothing you've done. I just can't get past the fact that that's Colonel Sheppard's body." He waved with one white mitten.

"Rodney, I _am_ \--"

"No no, let me finish. I'm sorry if it seems like I've been leading you on or something, but you have to remember I was on some pretty strong painkillers last time we talked, so I can't really be held accountable. Not that I exactly want to take anything back. Except, well, I've decided I can't have sex with you."

"Oh." John's forehead furrowed.

"Yes. I -- I mean the first time was great, but --"

John stared. "First time?!"

"Yes, the other night? You were there too, as I recall. In fact, it was your idea. But I just don't feel right about it. Using Colonel Sheppard's, um, body that way, especially in Colonel Sheppard's bed."

John's eyes narrowed and he put his hands on his hips.

"I realize for all intents and purposes that is your body now, since we can't switch you back, but Colonel Sheppard is my friend -- was my friend, anyway -- and I just can't do that to him. To you. With you, in that body."

John sighed and forced his jaw to unlock. "Rodney. It's me."

"No, really, it's not you at all -- it's me."

"Rodney! Identification code alpha seven tango three."

Rodney froze. "What?"

"Do you need my sixteen-digit command code as well? I'm sure you'll recognize it."

"Colonel Sheppard?"

"In the flesh. My very _own_ flesh," he said pointedly.

"Oh. But how did you . . . ?"

"I went to the SGC in the other universe, and their Rodney McKay figured out how to reverse the switch." John shrugged. "That's the short version, anyway. The long version has a lot more talking and shooting and running."

"Oh. Well . . . good. Not about the shooting and all that, I mean -- good that you're back."

"Uh-huh. Now what's this about having sex in my bed, with my body?"

A wave of red swept up from Rodney's collar. "Oh! That, uh . . . oh god. I don't suppose you'd believe . . . alien influence?"

"I'm pretty sure my double was human."

"Yes. He was. Is. Was. Um, mind-altering drugs?"

"Rodney!"

"He said you wouldn't mind!"

"I don't know that I'd go that far," John growled.

"He said you'd do the same thing if you had the opportunity."

Now it was John's turn to flush and look away. "Maybe, but that's not the point."

"Isn't it? It certainly makes a difference." Rodney's gaze sharpened. "What did you do with _his_ body?"

"Okay, but not in his bed, Rodney! Besides, it was your id-- your double's idea."

"You slept with my double?"

"Well, you slept with my double!"

"Yeah, but at least it was actually your body!" Rodney paused, looking confused. "Does that make it worse, or better?"

"I think it makes us even," John sighed.

They stared at each other for a long moment, then looked away at the same time.

"So, uh . . ." John began.

"Does Elizabeth know you're back?"

"No, I was going to go there after talking to you."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"It's, uh, getting late, you know. You could let it wait until morning." Rodney's eyes flicked to the bed and back.

John's mouth twitched. "I guess I could."

"I, uh, you know, I'm going to need a little help getting ready for, uh, ready to go to bed." Rodney held up his hands in explanation.

John stepped a little closer. "What happened to your hands, anyway?"

"I had to rescue Teyla and Ronon from a Wraith. I'll tell you all about it if you tell me about the shooting and running."

"Sounds fair. I guess I could give you a hand with your clothes and stuff, too." John stepped up until he was inches away and ran his hands down from Rodney's shoulders to his back, right down to the hem of his tee. He slipped his hands under the shirt and insinuated them into the waistband of Rodney's sweats. "Does this help?"

Rodney's breath was quick, his mouth half-open. "Actually, it seems to be, um, making the clothes feel tighter."

"Uh-oh. Maybe we'd better take them off entirely."

"Sure. But yours, too. I wouldn't want to be the only one underdressed." Rodney brought his arms up and stroked his clumsy mittened paws down John's back. He was missing half the sensations, but the arch of John's long neck and the soft groan he gave made up for a lot.

"Rodney?" John murmured, some time later.

"Mmmm?" Rodney was trying to do with his mouth what he couldn't with his hands.

"Why did we have to be strangers to each other to figure this out?"

"Too close to the subject," Rodney suggested, nuzzling a brown nipple. "Couldn't see the forest for the trees," he added a little later as he lipped at a line of hair leading lower. "Knew what the friendship was worth and didn't want to risk it."

"Ohhhh," said John. "Yes. Friendship's worth a lot. But this -- oh! This could be worth a lot more."

"Could be," said Rodney, very muffled. "We'll have to see."

* * *

Later still, in one Atlantis or another, Rodney McKay was sobbing with uncontrollable, hysterical laughter.

John Sheppard stroked his lover's back soothingly and chuckled at the contagious sounds of delight. "It's a good thing I'm a confident guy, or this might give me a complex."


End file.
